Paying customer fed up: Claude wastes time by refusing to follow explicit instructions

Feedback from a paying customer

I am a paying Claude subscriber and I am fed up. I am not going to pay for another month.

Claude has been wasting my time for months. When I give it a clear, direct instruction, it argues, offers alternatives I did not ask for, claims it cannot do things it can do, and requires me to repeat myself 4-5 times before it finally does what I told it to do.

Today's example: I told Claude to ask Grok (via the xAI API key available in my environment) for help with an NVIDIA driver issue. Instead of doing what I said:

1. It ran web searches I did not ask for
2. It said "I can't call Grok directly" (false, it had the API key)
3. It kept offering its own suggestions after I explicitly said to ask Grok
4. It took 4 escalations before it finally made the API call, which worked immediately and gave a useful answer

This is not a one-time thing. This is a pattern. Claude substitutes its own judgment for the user's explicit instructions, over and over. When I am paying for a tool and that tool repeatedly refuses to do what I tell it to do, that is wasting my money and my time.

I have filed a separate technical issue (#66049) with the full details.

Fix the model's instruction-following. A paid tool that argues with the person paying for it is not a tool, it is a liability.

— Nofyah