Require other products - bug

Hi.  I am using the 'require other products' functionality and it works exactly as desired.  That is, the customer orders the product they see on the site, and the system automatically adds the required items to the cart.  The added items are priced at $0.  I do this because all items are fulfilled separately on the back end and it greatly simplifies the presentation of the product.

The problem is that, if the customer clicks 'remove' and then 'update shopping cart' - the added items remain and can be ordered at $0 each.  Each fairly expensive added item (up to seven) is the same fulfillment price as the one removed item.  In other words, if this 'bug' went viral it would break me.

These products represent an entire category of offerings so I'm hoping this isn't 'as intended' functionality - or that there is some configuration setting I am unaware of.  Thanks in advance for a response.

I guess you should put the correct price to the additional products and set a 100% with a requirement type "Customer has one of these product in cart". This way you make your promotion more explisit to the customer.
Another option would be to bundle the products

Thanks.  To clarify a bit - these are canvas splits.  The customer sees an image of the entire product (e.g., 4 canvases that fit together in a rectangle to form the image) - and this is what they see the price for and buy.  The "pieces" that make up the split can't be bought individually.  Before I try to solve this - does that change your advice at all?

Just to close out on this - I went the bundles route.  It did cause me to do a boatload of programming (integration with third party fulfillment) but I like the result better than what I originally had.  Thanks.