That will never be solved. Nostr is not consistent by design. Whatever number comes back is only a number of the subs that are visible to you and the relays you are using at any given moment. It's impossible to know how many followers you have.
Thanks for the explanation. It's a real pity though.. Basically the only way to be sure the npub you follow knows it is to GM him in the DM. Am I right? If so, why not developing a path on the client side to give this optionality every time you click the 'follow' button?
gm!
It would also be broken because many clients will not implement that, especially the new ones. So your follow counter will never resemble the real value.
Got it 😟