Anthropic and Apple, always asymmetric
Round 15- My continuing appeals for the active engagement of national and EU law enforcement in restoring my consumer rights. This time, I include my 3rd subscriber… reflective moment here…
Today, I review and correct claims I made on the basis of ignorance and concealed information… I correct the crimes list and the actual crimes listed…
22 March’26cc: Italian law enforcement (AGCM & Garante) and EU law enforcement (CNECT-AIOFFICE) and Bank of Sages
Dear Sir or Madam
Greetings, I bring you #Report 15, a new high water mark, just as I am the oldest I’ve ever been, today…
If yesterday’s report was about the discovery of the root of this tangled mess, today’s is about a recalibration of a branch or two that may well need pollarding.
There are three distinct strands I present in today’s report:
- How the charge of 2 contracts presented as one is wrong.
- Apple’s cancellation times mismatch;
- Anthropic Ireland Limited’s bad faith ‘offer’.
Not 1 contract, but 2 separate contracts
I start with a discovery I shared with your office, yesterday.
I stated, and I quote from my email of 21 March ‘26….
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20 Feb 2026- I authorised Apple to charge the €22/mth base subscription for ClaudeAI, thus creating a contract with Apple, one of Claude mobile apps, and not Anthropic.
The distinction is important.
At this stage I was using ClaudeAI, 15 to 17 hours per day, per week, measured from Friday 05:00 to Friday 05:00 as my typical work pattern.
Wednesday, 4 March 2026 @ 17:58 - I started the “Prepaid extra usage, Individual plan”, which the
Claude web app presented when I pressed the ‘i’ button; because ClaudeAI was hitting session time limits while I was in the middle of an activity.
…….{additional notes irrelevant to this discussion}
The extra usage mechanism I ‘enabled’ and ‘purchased’ was from the web app, not through Apple. Anthropic’s terms state the contract was between I and Anthropic Ireland Limited, “not our Providers”. Apple is explicitly excluded from the extra usage relationship;
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This was the first time I truly understood that I’d ‘signed’ up to a separate contract…
- a bit like the Italian sales practice of treating an answered phone call as a legally binding contract… I keep my my landline disconnected.
- I live in Italy, and speak Italian like a native, of, well, England; my mother tongue…I’ve signed Italian contracts with a better comprehension than I did of Anthropic Ireland Limited’s English ‘offer’…
There were two separate contracts, with 2 different suppliers, in force at the same time; I incorrectly assumed only one was in play.
The Apple cancellation terminated the €22 / month base subscription contract.
This action did not, and could not, terminate the Anthropic Ireland Limited ‘remora’ contract.
I now realise that what Apple’s timestamp says, is entirely irrelevant to the Anthropic Ireland Limited contract because the latter was never under Apple’s contract. It just looked as if it was; protective colouring…
Apple’s time stamp mismatch is the subject of the next strand I’m presenting today, 22 March 2026.
I list below, 4 of the now 8 charges I’ve presented in my CONCLUSION section in each of my prior submissions.
In my report of 21 March 2026, I showed the due diligence that makes charges #2 and #3, shown below, false.
- [130.1] x prepaid markup, basically, price gouging on a service with no guaranteed delivery standard;
Illegal charge post-cancellation, a straightforward consumer law violation;Two contracts behind one with obscured terms, classic unfair contract territory under EU Directive 93/13- Apple’s timestamp manipulation amounting to third party collusion to defeat cancellation rights.
To summarise thus far, the reason that #2 and #3 above are false is as follows;
- Stands….
- Not an Illegal charge; I cancelled the apple subscription, which had no connection with the Anthropic Ireland Limited contract- remora
- NOT Two separate contracts behind one; simply 2 separate contracts- I just didn’t know at the time they were separate, as clearly evidenced by my actions and communications with Anthropic support, and my good faith submissions and findings in the reports I have submitted to your offices since 8 March ‘26.
Apple’s cancellation times mismatch
Turning my attention to Charge #4, which was
- Apple’s timestamp manipulation amounting to third party collusion to defeat cancellation rights.
This too, needs attention as I made a false claim and failed to identity the real crime.
On 12 March 2026 - In my report to to your offices I recorded an email I had written to Anthropic support;
my notes
On 5 Mar 2026, at 16:28, <@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi, Anthropic
I’ve listed the six charges of €12.xx that you have made on top of my paid subscription of 22 per month.
…….
{many lines of ranting}
……
On top of that when I try to upload 1 single jpg image, I’m hitting limits.
Your billing tactics are deliberately opaque and disingenuous.
I have cancelled my subscription. I came as refugee from dreadful ChatGPT, but, by god, they’re better than this, and that’s after they’ve been captured by the Pentagon.
Your billing practices are utterly despicable.
Regards
Ja
…….
{many lines of ranting}
……
I was in an utter fury when I cancelled at the same time as I was berating the artificial idiot. The times were damn simultaneous.
Regards
Ja
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On 5 March 2026 @ 20:24
Almost 4 hours after my record of cancellation
I received the following email -
The following changes to your Apple Account, @yahoo.com, were made on
5 March 2026 at 20:24:35 GMT+1:
Billing Information
Under PSD2 and EU consumer protection law, a cancellation should be effective at the point the consumer initiates it, not at the point the provider processes it.
A 4-hour processing delay that the consumer cannot verify, cannot dispute, and is not informed of shifts the risk entirely onto the consumer.
Apple’s App Store terms state that cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period, and not at the moment I pressed cancel. This is standard Apple policy, buried in terms, NOT explained at the point that I cancelled.
Anthropic Ireland Limited’s bad faith ‘offer’
Wednesday, 4 March 2026 @ 17:58 - I started the “Prepaid extra usage, Individual plan”, which the
Claude web app presented when I pressed the ‘i’ button; because ClaudeAI was hitting session time limits while I was in the middle of an activity.
What I did wrong- I clicked enable on the web app under pressure, mid-session, when hitting limits, thus, unwittingly, and unknowingly created a direct billing relationship with Anthropic Ireland Limitedseparate from AppStore, where I paid the €22/mth base subscription.
What Anthropic did wrong - presented this as a seamless continuation of my existing €22 /mth base subscription; there was-
- No clear disclosure that I was entering a second contract on a different payment rail.
- No disclosure that cancelling the Apple subscription would not cancel this one.
- No upper limit. {the default cap in the field was 2000, which I modified to 50; it made no difference}
- No plain language explanation of what I was authorising.
- No disclosure that charges would continue while I slept.
Note: I repeat, the default cap in the field was 2000, which I modified to 50; it made no difference to the amount taken in <24 hours; €86.58
I believe the above lack of clarity is addressed under civil/consumer law as unconscionable conduct; a contract or term that is so one-sided, so lacking in transparency, and exploiting such an inequality of bargaining power that no reasonable person would have agreed to it if they’d understood what they were agreeing to.
That no contract law would support such an abusive and one-sided relationship…
In EU consumer law terms, I believe this meets the criteria for misleading omission under Article 22 Codice del Consumo, unfair contract term under Directive 93/13, and a strong argument for the contract being voidable on the grounds of lack of informed consent.
CONCLUSIONS
Since I first started reporting to Italian law enforcement (AGCM & Garante) and EU law enforcement (CNECT-AIOFFIC), and now, my new subscriber, from the crime scene, I have kept a ledger of sins, of rubicons crossed, of offences against my digital presence.
I had catalogued 8 aggravating crimes in the past few emails to your offices; I contended that 7 crimes were the branches;
- and the root of all, in terms of timing, opacity, asymmetry, and architecture was Anthropic Ireland Limited’s bad faith ‘offer’.
Today’s submission is explicitly targeted at correcting the list of crimes based on due diligence and recent information.
The adjusted and corrected list of 7 crimes stand at present as:
- [130.1] x prepaid markup, basically, price gouging on a service with no guaranteed delivery standard;
- Anthropic’s misleading omission under Article 22 Codice del Consumo, unfair contract term under Directive 93/13;
- Apple’s timestamp mismatch is a breach of PSD2 and EU consumer protection law, a cancellation should be effective at the point the consumer initiates it, not at the point the provider processes it.
- An availability of 62.5%, which is well outside industry standards.
- 95% degradation as a punitive response.
- Silent restoration of availability without acknowledgement, explanation, nor apology, which confirms the degradation was deliberate, the restoration was a choice, and Anthropic knew both.
- Draconian throttling between 0.02% and 5% availability as a punitive response.
[Note: The observant may have noticed the operand 130.1 has replaced 61 in the last 11 reports, I have the maths to back (Appendix 1) it up as the 61 was in error; however, 61, 130.1, meh! Quibbling about amounts is confession; concern about scale misses the point of the law- it’s not the size of it, it’s the fact of it].
(Note: in my previous email of 16 March ‘26, I provisionally identified BoS as part of this list; I have submitted a SAR regarding the unilateral removal of my data from sight without my knowledge or consent. At present they are claiming the full 15 days (now 10 or so) before being obliged to respond; the lack of good faith and transparency, not to mention suborning my sovereign rights over my data, is troubling, but may mean nothing more than risk-averse tactics, troubling nonetheless, which is why I’m holding a special place for them in my list, for the nonce).
Any single one of the above is a complaint worthy of your attention and actions.
Together they describe a system designed to maximise extraction, with maximum bad faith, and a complete absence of accountability.
Claude’s master has found his voice through deed, and offers advice on congress and travel…
BoS is reflecting ‘am I the fairest of them all’. I am patient. The reciprocity mirror tells no lies.
I remain, the ever travelling, ‘reasonable’, sane, reciprocal and patient man.
0808
Appendix 1 - Remora Charge Rates
