Consumer rights complaint: Claude Pro service degradation without notice — Directive 2019/770 non-conformity

Description

This issue is a formal consumer rights complaint regarding the degradation of Claude Pro (paid subscription) service quality without prior notice, explanation, or compensation.

Legal Basis

Directive (EU) 2019/770 — Digital Content and Services Conformity

• Article 7: The digital content must be of the quality and performance that are normal for digital content of the same type and which the consumer may reasonably expect.
• Article 8: The trader shall ensure that the consumer is provided with updates, including security updates, that are necessary to keep the digital content in conformity.
• Article 11: The trader shall be liable for any lack of conformity which exists at the time the digital content is supplied and which becomes apparent within the period of the contract.
• Article 14: The consumer is entitled to have the digital content brought into conformity, to receive a proportionate reduction in price, or to terminate the contract.

Spanish transposition — RDL 1/2007 (Ley General para la Defensa de los Consumidores y Usuarios)

• Article 114-117: Rights regarding lack of conformity in goods and digital content.

Facts

1. Paid subscription: Claude Pro at EUR 20/month, active and billing.

1. Pre-degradation quality (before ~Sep 16, 2026):

• Zero hallucinations in formal legal documents
• Perfect base64 reproduction for email attachments via MCP tools
• Accurate recall of stored identifiers and names with diacritics
• Rich, detailed, context-aware responses
• Expressive personality and comprehensive summaries
• Used daily for formal complaints under EU AI Act and GDPR with flawless precision

1. Post-degradation quality (after ~Sep 16, 2026):

• Date hallucinations (wrote 2025 instead of 2026 in legal document)
• Base64 corruption above ~1200 characters (cannot send email attachments)
• Name/identifier recall errors ("Hasson" vs "H4ss9m")
• Diacritics dropped ("Adrian Garcia Casado" vs "Adrian Garcia Casado")
• Flat, robotic responses lacking context awareness
• Truncated summaries omitting critical details
• Safety classifier instability

1. No notice provided: Anthropic made no announcement about Opus 4.6 quality changes. No email, no in-app notification, no changelog entry.

1. Problem is known: Multiple GitHub issues from different users report similar symptoms (#96182, #96224, #96254, #96260, #96283, #96289). All marked as "duplicate" — confirming Anthropic is aware of the problem.

1. Suspected cause: Infrastructure changes related to the Cowork-Chat merger (~Sep 16, 2026), likely involving aggressive model quantization to handle increased load.

Non-conformity under Directive 2019/770

The digital content (Claude Pro / Opus 4.6) no longer meets:

• The objective conformity requirements (Art. 7): the quality and performance are significantly below what a paying consumer can reasonably expect from the same service they subscribed to.
• The subjective conformity requirements (Art. 6): the service no longer matches the characteristics demonstrated before the degradation, which formed the basis of the consumer's purchase decision.

Consumer Rights Affected

Under Art. 14 of Directive 2019/770, the consumer is entitled to:

1. Bring the content into conformity — revert the model to pre-degradation quality
2. Proportionate price reduction — refund for the period of degraded service
3. Contract termination — full refund if conformity cannot be restored

Requested Actions

1. Acknowledge the Opus 4.6 regression publicly
2. Revert the changes that caused the degradation
3. Provide a proportionate refund for the period of degraded service (Sep 16 - present)
4. Implement a notification policy for model quality changes affecting paying subscribers

Evidence

• GitHub issues #96182, #96283, #96289 (filed by the same user, documenting symptoms)
• Email thread to feedback@anthropic.com (3 messages with full technical documentation)
• Email thread to privacy@meta.com showing date hallucination in a formal legal complaint
• Multiple third-party issues confirming similar symptoms (#96224, #96254, #96260)

Reporter

• Adrian Garcia Casado
• Claude Pro subscriber
• Region: Galicia, Spain (EU consumer protection applies)
• GitHub: adri22235