Kagi has its share of issues. The whole shirt thing was a debacle and I wish they'd just sunk the absurd amount of money back into the product. I just often find the criticism from non-users to be disingenuous.
Just adding a $0.02 here - I placed an order for the free/gifted-with-subscription Kagi shirt and received it about a month later. Worn twice so far. Largest complaint? It shrank quite a bit in the dryer on medium heat.
The search engine works great for me. I will almost certainly renew my subscription when it's time to. Glad to see them continually delivering user-benefiting features.