Anthropic’s invisibile hand in your pocket
Round 8: My continuing appeals for the active engagement of national and EU law enforcement in restoring my consumer rights. Anytime now will work well...
Dear Sir or Madam
Greetings, live from the ever changing dynamic of a real-time crime scene, where changes, subtle and gross abound.
This morning, Sunday 15 March 2026, half past dark, I am the beneficiary of 24 hrs of unhindered access to Claude.
That pesky 5% availability?.. has gone… well, fing orbital.. 200%, 400% 1,000% (in pedo math).. at least 99.9%, 99%, 90%, 50%?
Well, it ain’t 5%, anymore.
And, based on my foundational principle of reciprocity, I am bound to reflect positives with the same enthusiasm I bring to my carping.
As predicted by the lexicon of digital space law enforcement, ‘red sky at night, [indeed], a shepherd’s delight’.
You may recall from yesterday’s edition that Anthropic do have a (piss poor) SLA, evidenced by practice, and experience ; Their SLAs are as follows
Note: the operand, 130.1, above, is a function of dividing the remora rate per day, or hr by the Base subscription rate per day, or hour, respectively.
However, by including, as I must, my experience since half past dark yesterday, I add a new line to Anthropic’s chaotic approach to pricing.
- 99.9% @ €108.58 for 8.76 hours downtime per year, perhaps; well, at least, not 11 months/yr. Talk about 6 months holidays, twice a year, eh!
This ‘price point’ stands about 4.9 times above the base subscription (€22) and about 79% of the ‘Claude Max 5x’ price of €138.
Note: it’s not immediately obvious if the ‘5x’ in the product name is legally acceptable ‘puffery’ or a reference to ‘never 5% availability, and never 5 9s%’, or to the quintupled speed of Claude’s mentation.
On the availability point, errm. Well, Anthropic keep their peace on the matter in favour of an Adam Smith ‘invisible hand’ average across a continuous background noise of downtime, above which the signal of Claude’s ‘I’m alive’ ping floats effortlessly, more or less audible.
I see their problem; this is a bugger to quantify. What to measure? The signal? The noise?
Anthropic’s approach measures neither, publishes neither, and exacerbates further by refusing to time stamp sessions, even denying Claude the ability to do so. Thus making it unverifiable by design.
Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt!
Donning a hat I’ve not worn in anger for many, many years; as an ex business consultant, I have to say this schizophrenic approach taken by Anthropic as a pricing policy fails at so many levels, it beggars belief.
I would urge an ‘open book’ approach to ‘Menu pricing’ that, back in the day, we used with clients of our exceptionally complex services that managed their entire IT based production environments, 24 x 7 x 365 at 99.999% (5.37 minutes downtime a year).
Each application function requested was transparently costed, and, transparently marked up by an agreed rate; simples!
Good faith and transparency, have demonstrated much higher profit levels than ever deceit and bad faith can accrue. Even Russian business practices have made this observation.
Why did my availability change?
From 5%- to 99.9%, 99%, 50%..a remarkable change since 5 March 2026; 10 busy, fun-filled days of poking the bear…
Possible reasons:
- My live reports to Italian (AGCM, Garante) and EU law enforcement;
- My live blogs of my live reports in 1 above;
- My Trustpilot review flagged for manual perusal;
- Human oversight;
- My live blog series reached someone in Anthropic;
- The regulatory filing via PEC created a formal paper trail;
- Conciliation as a de-escalation tactic;
- Coincidence;
Assumed factors, and likely causes:
- Started on 8th March ‘26; today 15 March 2026: 8 days for institutions whose response time horizon is measured in months and years, not nanoseconds ...hmmnn… nah!
- Again, my blogs are on Wordpress and Ghost, not exactly the beating heart of resistance to business scams; my marketing varies between non-existent and accidental. A nobody ranting… nah!
- Anthropic Trustpilot review flagged for action. idk
- Human oversight assigned after the complaints went live; ?!
- “My live blog series reached someone internally; eight published pieces with Anthropic named explicitly is a different threat profile than a support ticket”, says, Claude
- The regulatory filing via PEC created a formal paper trail that triggers human oversight…possible; I’ve complained wide and often and have more PECs than Schwarzenegger.
- “Conciliatory, by restoring service quietly without acknowledgement as a de-escalation tactic, hoping I notice, and, thus, cease and desist!”, sayeth, Claude.
- Coincidence; angry bird/bot timed out…idk
Applying a much sharpened Occam’s razor…
- Points 1, 2, 4, 5, and most unlikely;
- Points 3, and 6; plausible
- Point 7; The absence of any communication accompanying the restoration is itself evidence; if it were a system fix they’d say nothing. If it were conciliation they’d say nothing. Either way, silence is the tell.
- Point 8; Coincidental, correlation, causation- the 3cs of diminishing letters while increasing liability… idk
CONCLUSION
Since I first started reporting from the crime scene, I have kept a ledger of sins, of rubicons crossed, of offences against my digital presence.
To the 6 aggravating crimes that I have catalogued in the past few emails to your offices, I would like to add a 7th:
- 61 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.
- 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.
Any single one of these is a complaint worthy of your attention and actions.
Together they describe a system designed to maximise extraction, in maximum bad faith, and with complete absence of accountability.
The silence of Claude’s master’s voice is a thunderous thing…
I remain, the ever ‘reasonable’, and patient man.
0808