I think what it comes down to for me, is that I love the gameplay and experience of playing Elite. It really does scratch an itch I've had for years and years and years since I stopped playing Vendetta Online actively sometime in 2008-2009.
On the other hand, their customer service department could seriously use some fucking work. I have experienced a particular bug multiple times that basically prevents me from interacting with the game in any meaningful fashion beyond logging in - I'm unable to leave the instance around the station or use station services once it occurs, and until I am forcibly moved to another location by the CS team or there's a server restart, the issue does not resolve itself.
It's been reported, and ticketed, and all that shit.
The last time I had it, I was told "we think we've got this fixed for 1.2, please retest it if you can after the 1.2 release and update this support ticket if you run into it again."
Well, I ran into it twice after that patch. The first time was resolved the next day by a server reboot. The second time... well, let's just say I have been unable to play the game for almost 9 days. I updated the ticket as asked (the last time was last Monday, when I actually caught the issue live on my Twitch stream), but have yet to receive any response beyond the "retest after 1.2". That was March 1st. I've put updates in that ticket on March 25th and 30th. I even opened a new "stuck/unable-to-play" ticket this past Monday. It has not been responded to either.
Say what you will about CCP's GMs and customer service team but jesus christ they put Frontier to shame in ways that are not describable by Backstage's rules.
It also does not help that Frontier's entire CS department works in the UK on standard UK work hours, 9-5. Nobody works other shifts.