AI power users claim Anthropic duped them with subscriptions, and they’re taking it to court
AI power users claim Anthropic duped them with subscriptions, and they’re taking it to court
AI 高级用户声称 Anthropic 在订阅服务上欺骗了他们，并已诉诸法庭
Subscribers of Anthropic’s Max plan ($100-$200 per month) say they didn’t get what they thought they were paying for. Anthropic Max 计划（每月 100 至 200 美元）的订阅者表示，他们并没有获得他们认为自己所支付的服务。
Anthropic says power users are key to its business — it’s prioritized them even when it means cutting off other popular applications, like OpenClaw. But some of these same customers say Anthropic misled them into believing they’d get more out of a top-tier pricing subscription than they did. Anthropic 表示，高级用户是其业务的关键——即使这意味着要切断其他热门应用（如 OpenClaw）的访问权限，公司也优先考虑了这些用户。但其中一些客户表示，Anthropic 误导了他们，让他们以为顶级定价的订阅服务能提供比实际更多的使用量。
In an expanded class action lawsuit filed today, a group of Claude subscribers say the company deceptively advertised the limits of its Max subscription tier. The lawsuit was brought by attorneys Monica Vaca and Kati Daffan, who both formerly worked at the Federal Trade Commission under Lina Khan. It’s a rare attempt to legally penalize AI companies for a widely held point of frustration: the industry’s growing money squeeze. 在今天提交的一项扩大后的集体诉讼中，一群 Claude 订阅者称该公司对其 Max 订阅层级的限制进行了欺骗性宣传。该诉讼由律师 Monica Vaca 和 Kati Daffan 提起，两人都曾在美国联邦贸易委员会（FTC）Lina Khan 麾下工作。这是针对人工智能公司日益严重的“金钱挤压”这一普遍痛点，试图通过法律手段进行惩罚的罕见案例。
Anthropic’s Max plan for Claude is an upgrade to the $20/month Pro plan. It has two pricing options: $100 per month for “5x” the usage limits of Pro or $200 per month for “20x”. But the lawsuit alleges that these numbers, advertised in Anthropic’s marketing graphics, are misleadingly couched in fine print. Anthropic actually says you’ll get 20x or 5x the usage that the Pro plan offers, but it’s only promised for five-hour chunks of time that are subject to a weekly limit — which the complaint alleges adds up to a much smaller total increase in usage capacity. Anthropic 的 Claude Max 计划是每月 20 美元 Pro 计划的升级版。它有两种定价选项：每月 100 美元可获得 Pro 计划“5 倍”的使用限额，或每月 200 美元获得“20 倍”。但诉讼指控称，Anthropic 营销图表中宣传的这些数字被误导性地隐藏在细则中。Anthropic 实际上表示，你将获得 Pro 计划所提供使用量的 20 倍或 5 倍，但这仅承诺在受每周限制的 5 小时时间段内有效——诉状称，这加起来的总使用容量增幅要小得多。
To understand this, “you’ve got to dive deep,” Vaca said. It requires clicking two different hyperlinks to see the word “session,” and then to see what “session” meant, you’d need to separately go to the Pro plan webpage for an expanded definition. Vaca 说，要理解这一点，“你必须深入挖掘”。这需要点击两个不同的超链接才能看到“会话”（session）这个词，而要了解“会话”的含义，还需要单独跳转到 Pro 计划的网页查看详细定义。
Complaints about Max’s terms have cropped up online. One Reddit user wrote, “The weekly allowance is what the pricing page makes you think you’re buying. The rolling 5-hour window is what actually controls whether you can work … It’s like giving someone a bigger gas tank while keeping the fuel pump limited to one gallon every five hours.” 关于 Max 条款的投诉在网上层出不穷。一位 Reddit 用户写道：“定价页面让你以为你买的是每周的额度。但实际上控制你是否能工作的却是那个 5 小时的滚动窗口……这就像给某人换了一个更大的油箱，却把加油泵限制在每 5 小时只能加一加仑油。”
Vaca said in an interview that Claude users often will upgrade on the fly if they encounter limits while working on a project, then are often frustrated after they pay. “People see that they are going to get this dramatically expanded usage … What we hear from people, though, is that when they sign up, they are surprised that they’re not getting the usage that they thought they were getting.” Vaca 在接受采访时表示，Claude 用户在进行项目时如果遇到限制，往往会临时升级，但付费后却感到沮丧。“人们看到他们将获得大幅扩展的使用量……但我们从用户那里听到的是，当他们注册时，他们惊讶地发现自己并没有获得预想中的使用量。”
Over the past eight months or more, as pressures to turn a profit increase, AI customers have frequently complained that top labs are passing on their steep operating costs. Although Anthropic announced the Max plan in April 2025, it didn’t impose the allegedly deceptive weekly limits until a few months later in August, as the company pushed to compete with OpenAI. In Anthropic’s latest model release, Fable 5.1, the company hinted at broader cost concerns among customers, writing that it was “addressing the feedback we’ve received from customers on price” in the new model’s pricing. 在过去八个多月里，随着盈利压力的增加，人工智能客户经常抱怨顶级实验室正在将高昂的运营成本转嫁给他们。尽管 Anthropic 在 2025 年 4 月宣布了 Max 计划，但直到几个月后的 8 月，随着公司努力与 OpenAI 竞争，才实施了这些被指具有欺骗性的每周限制。在 Anthropic 最新的模型版本 Fable 5.1 中，该公司暗示了客户对成本的广泛担忧，并写道，新模型的定价旨在“解决我们从客户那里收到的关于价格的反馈”。
The complaint was filed in July before being withdrawn and refiled as an expanded class action. In a motion to dismiss the earlier case, Anthropic argued that it didn’t necessarily omit the session limits from its marketing; rather, it says it’s technically available to the consumer if they know where to look. “Accessing this clarifying information … required nothing more than clicking hyperlinks available in the purchase process—the digital equivalent of flipping a product over to read the back label,” Anthropic wrote in the motion to dismiss. 该诉状于 7 月提交，随后被撤回并作为扩大后的集体诉讼重新提交。在驳回早期案件的动议中，Anthropic 辩称其并未在营销中遗漏会话限制；相反，它表示如果消费者知道去哪里查看，这些信息在技术上是可获取的。Anthropic 在驳回动议中写道：“获取这些澄清信息……只需点击购买过程中提供的超链接即可——这在数字层面等同于将产品翻过来阅读背面的标签。”
Anthropic did not respond to a request for comment. Anthropic 未回应置评请求。
Vaca disagrees that it’s that easy to understand the terms. “This is hard for consumers — they don’t know what’s in that black box,” she said. “They have to rely on the claims the marketer is giving. There’s no way for them to audit it. There’s no way for them to know exactly what it is they’re going to get… They’re basically taking a leap, and they’re believing in an honest marketplace.” Vaca 不同意条款如此容易理解的说法。“这对消费者来说很难——他们不知道那个黑匣子里装的是什么，”她说。“他们必须依赖营销人员提供的声明。他们无法审计，也无法确切知道自己会得到什么……他们基本上是在冒险，并且相信这是一个诚信的市场。”
She added that another reason the case was “compelling” for her is that she and Daffan started hearing from people who felt they needed to pay high-priced subscription costs for AI services in order to avoid becoming irrelevant in the job market. But oftentimes, she said, they felt they weren’t getting what they paid for, which was frustrating for a service that costs between $100 and $200 per month. 她补充说，这个案件对她来说“引人注目”的另一个原因是，她和 Daffan 开始听到一些人的心声，他们觉得必须支付高昂的 AI 服务订阅费，以避免在就业市场上被淘汰。但她说，他们往往觉得物非所值，对于每月 100 到 200 美元的服务来说，这令人沮丧。
“[Daffan] and I worked at the Federal Trade Commission for 38 years combined,” Vaca said, adding, “There is a long line of precedent on false advertising. It’s commercial speech. You can’t lie when you’re marketing a product.” “我和 [Daffan] 在联邦贸易委员会工作了总共 38 年，”Vaca 说，并补充道，“关于虚假广告有很长的先例。这是商业言论。你在营销产品时不能撒谎。”
Even if Anthropic has the stipulations somewhere on its website, Vaca said, it shouldn’t be up to the consumer to have to seek that out. “It’s a ‘buyer beware’ approach,” she said. “And that’s really not fair to people.” Vaca 表示，即使 Anthropic 在其网站的某个地方列出了这些规定，也不应该由消费者去费力寻找。“这是一种‘买者自负’的做法，”她说。“这对人们来说真的不公平。”