You are 100% right!
It sounds like he doesn't want to tell his client he wasted 1 week and
2000$ on something that simply can be found in the help. So the easy
way out is to blame MS for everything.

Welll... this is in my help (in Dutch)

Operator Beschrijving
- Negatief maken (zoals in -1)
% Procent
^ Machtsverheffen
* en / Vermenigvuldigen en delen
+ en - Optellen en aftrekken
& Twee tekenreeksen aan elkaar koppelen
= < <= = < Vergelijken

As you can see, a negative sign has precendence over power.
Unfortunately for Fred, a negative sign and a subtraction are
typographically identical. There is only one good solution: using
brackets.


This is in my help too:

Reference operators
- Negation (as in -1)
% Percent
^ Exponentiation
* and / Multiplication and division
+ and - Addition and subtraction
& Connects two strings of text (concatenation)
= < <= = < Comparison

But to me it's immaterial. Why don't they follow the normal mathematical
order? If I'm going to sort a list of numbers should I be expected to look
up the sort order to see if they deviated from the norm? No.