I don’t think it’s entitled at all to expect things to not suck regardless of whether they’re free or require payment. Truly good products make you want to pay to receive a carrot, bad ones to avoid a stick. The only carrots Feedly has to offer are all moldy and gross, so they’ve resorted to more and more sticks.

The author also did exactly what you want by switching to NetNewsWire, so I don’t know what you’re complaining about other than that they made a blog post explaining that decision.