You absolutely can blame Elsevier here. A corporation taking advantage of a dysfunctional system to extract profit at the expense of others is bad. "Oh, the system is something that can be exploited so of course corporations should exploit it" is something worth criticizing, IMO.

Peer reviews are usually two reviewers who maybe do two rounds of reviews. Even if people are getting a reasonable fee, £2700 is more than enough to cover it.