Simpler is indeed sometimes the best - particularly for those who don't feel the need to get the very best potential out of their loads and to do the work to accomplish that. i.e. if all you need is minute of tin can, why work for better? And if replacement brass is not an issue, why worry about case life?
You're quit right that Lee can be spotty at times on their custom shop work. I usually don't have much use for Lee products and their customer service is one of those reasons, but their collet dies, universal depriming dies, etc are worth it.
The thing about the collet die is it still works fine with the default mandrel it comes with and minimizes the working of cases during resizing. But ordering the right size mandrel (or having somebody with a lathe make you one), is all about keeping it simple once you have the proper size mandrel to resize your brass to the proper neck size for your cast bullets in one pass.
