Let's say your customers are complaining that youtube is slow. Let's say, you found out that it's because the peering partner of your peering partners peering partner is congested.
To fix this, you can try to talk to that any of the 3 parties involved, or you find a new peering agreement (if possible), or you actually start paying for the traffic.
Or you just leave it as-is, hoping that at some point somebody closer to the congestion starts complaining, which eventually is going to happen.
This certainly is the cheapest route and this is what we honestly can expect considering that all we are promised is 'best effort'. Everything beyond that is really cool to have, but also comes with some expense for the providers.