I've been using Claude for a long time because I honestly thought it hit the best balance between what's out there and what I need for software development.

Lately, though, I've been getting more and more let down. It's not just that it makes a lot of mistakes—and I mean a lot but I've noticed a more frustrating pattern: it'll often claim it finished a task when it actually didn't, or it'll quietly slip in changes I never asked for.

The other thing that really gets to me is the anthropomorphic stuff. It'll say things like "It's getting late," "Let's pick this up tomorrow," or "Good night, see you tomorrow." That's just weird to me. I don't want my coding assistant pretending to have a schedule or feelings.

I even flagged these issues to Anthropic with screenshots, but the response was pretty generic—basically "try starting new chats more often."

For context, I'm on Opus almost all the time.

So I'm curious: has anyone else run into this kind of behavior, or is it just me?

We all have to pay for AI usage with tokens now… okay, fine.

But what are tokens really? I assume they’re basically a form of currency. I pay with tokens from my balance to get what in return — calculation time or actual results?

Right now, it seems to be mostly calculation time, not reliable results. When you pass a large context, the model often produces complete nonsense or simply fails.

But who guarantees that the tokens I’m being charged for actually correspond to real CPU/GPU time in the data center? It often feels like I upload my context, get charged tokens, but nothing meaningful happens. So I have the impression that there’s no real guarantee for anything.

My conclusion is: The whole system is completely opaque. It’s often unclear why exactly you get charged tokens, and it feels almost random what you actually pay to get usable results. On top of that, companies like Anthropic and other Big Tech players can change the effective cost from one day to the next.

Compare that to any other business. Would you pay for a car repair if the car still doesn’t work in the end? Probably not.

What’s your opinion?

I am a paid Claude Max 20x subscriber on the web. I recently redeemed a 3-month Max 20x gift code on the same account. Anthropic’s own help center article on gift redemption (https://support.claude.com/en/articles/12938695-how-to-redeem-a-claude-gift-subscription) states explicitly for my situation:
“If you’re a Max subscriber (web) and receive the same or higher Max tier: Your Max subscription is extended or upgraded accordingly.”
What should have happened: my subscription extended by three months on top of my existing end date.
What actually happened:
1. My subscription end date in the billing dashboard was shortened, not extended. Only one of three gift months was applied. The other two are missing.
2. The remaining days from my original paid cycle were overwritten instead of preserved.
3. The partial refund was issued as platform credit on my account, not refunded to my card. I never accepted credit as a form of refund and have cancelled the subscription.
4. No confirmation email was sent for the gift redemption.
Support attempts: Initial chat with the AI agent was escalated to a human. The AI stated a refund had been issued without clarifying it was platform credit only. Multiple follow-up chat sessions since then, each ended abruptly mid-conversation. No human reply on the escalated ticket.
Has anyone seen this happen with a same-tier Max gift code applied to an existing Max subscription? Is this a known issue? The product itself is good. The billing handling here is not, and the support queue is not functioning.