Bound Spirits - what good are they?, Is Binding worth the investment? Options

[Buster]

I'm thinking about leaving out my Binding skill in my next mage character because I'm not seeing a great benefit to bound spirits. Here's my reasoning:

Say the mage has maxed out his Spellcasting, so his Summoning and Binding skills are maxed at only 4 points each.

If a mage has Magic 5, Binding 4, a Power Focus 2, and a Binding Focus 3, that's 14 dice total so he gets an average of 4 hits or can buy 3 hits. A force 5 spirit rolls 10 dice for 3 average hits or can buy 2 hits. Therefore, the mage is only netting 1 or 2 hits. Since the binding materials cost 2500 nuyen per binding, each service is costing the mage a month's living expenses! He could buy a brand new drone for the cost of each binding. And that isn't even counting the 30,000 nuyen and 3 BP he spent on the binding focus and the 50,000 nuyen and 2 BP spent on the power focus. Even if he maxes out his Edge and uses that in the binding roll, he'd only have 2 more services per binding.

Since each service is costing as much as a couple of missiles, you'd expect the spirit to be a devil in combat, right? A force 5 fire spirit has a (7 + 5 dice) vs (defender's dice) chance of hitting and can do 5 hits of fire damage which is resisted by 1/2 impact armor + fire protection. Nice, but not exactly an overwhelming force.

If combat isn't your thing, it can do a Search or Guard you against fire instead. Meh. There are all kinds of spells, devices, and unbound spirits that can do that for free.

I suppose you could use your service for a +5 bonus to one spellcasting roll, but since he just spent a fortune on a binding focus, it would make more sense to get a Spellcasting Focus instead.

If he maxed out his Charisma to say 5, he could keep 5 spirits bound at a time. He could spend one service each per turn over 5 turns and sick 'em all on a target all at once. That would be impressive, but awful expensive at 10,000 nuyen per combat. If the mage had invested heavily in Charisma (along with his heavy investment in Binding skill, Magic, Edge, foci, and binding materials), unleashing a horde of bound spirits is a nice ace in the hole.

Without a high Magic AND a high Edge AND a high Charisma AND a high Binding skill AND a large bank account, it seems like the only use for Binding is to conjure an ally spirit with the Ally Conjuration metamagic power.

I think I must be missing something here. Am I using the wrong spirit or the spirit incorrectly for combat? Is a lower force spirit still effective in combat? Are there better uses for a bound spirit? Is there a way to get more than 4 or 5 services from a bound spirit which lowers the cost per service to a more reasonable level?