Yes this online service legit sucks. It sucks for all of us here for sure because I'm sure most of us want to play Ultimate online together BUT they are giving us NOTHING of value. I don't care about playing 30 year old NES games when most of them aren't fun to play anymore, the ability to purchase overpriced NES controllers that ONLY work with the online service, the cloud saves are half-assed implemented with only SOME games supporting it and will be deleted within a few days if you can't re-up. The Switch online itself is very hit-miss. I get communication errors out the butt when I play Splatoon 2 and MK8: Deluxe online and lag galore when I play ARMS and Mario Tennis Aces. No it's not my connection, I have really good internet speeds and my PS4 rarely lags. The phone app is legit pointless and a GARBAGE solution to voice chat and only supports SOME games (which can be looked at as a good thing tbh). Nintendo delayed this service for a YEAR and a HALF promising more features/surprises to be revealed and originally promised SNES games as part of the service on launch. They lied about both things. They didn't even bother going into details about the "special offers" which makes me believe Nintendo STILL hasn't figured it all out even after a damn near 2 year delay.
It's a real shame when the Wii, Wii U, and 3DS had better online capabilities and options then the Switch does in 2018 but it costs more....
Wii U had an internet browser (a fantastic one I might add), Miiverse (which was convoluted) but it let you send messages to friends, video chat (even if it was rarely used and you had to be out of a game to use it). It had multimedia apps like Netflix, Crunchyroll, Youtube, etc. It didn't require stupid friend codes to add people, had game invites, screenshot sharing to facebook, it had on system voice chat support. This was in 2012 and was free...
3DS had miiverse, a messaging system at first with Swapnote but was shut down, multimedia apps like Netflix and youtube, on system voice chat, an internet browser (on the New 3DS), themes.
Wii had a messaging system, on system voice chat (even if rarely any games used it), had a bunch of weird but wacky apps like Check Mii Out, Weather, Everybody Votes, multimedia apps like Netflix and Youtube, had an internet browser. This was in 2007 and it was FREE.
Switch has....Hulu, cloud saves, 30 second video/screenshot capture to Facebook/Twitter, and NES games. Now pay us $20!
See how I didn't even mention Sony/Microsoft (since to most Nintendo fans that's frowned upon to compare) but just comparing it to Nintendo's own past offerings make Switch online a joke even compared to their past.