5 ms·

AWS charged me $500 over 4 years for a “free” micro instance

4 points by rmtech 6y ago

AWS "free" offerings can cost a lot more than you think - I tried out a "free" t2.micro instance in 2016 and received a surprise bill for $500 recently. It turns out that AWS does not terminate unused free instances when the 12 month free trial runs out - they will happily bill you until the end of time, irrespective if you ever log in to their service, run code, etc. When I got in touch with AWS customer services about this they just told me to get lost. Legally AWS may be skirting around consumer protection regulations with the way they market AWS free as free credits rather than a free service. There are laws like 15 USC Ch. 110: ONLINE SHOPPER PROTECTION §8403. "Negative option marketing on the Internet" which are designed to prevent companies from automatically and silently upgrading customers from a free trial to a paid product. Companies like Amazon will keep doing this for as long as we let them get away with it - do what you can to protect yourself from outrageous costs; use a prepaid credit card with a limited balance when signing up online, and spread the word about AWS' bad behavior.

elmerfud 6y ago
While I don't like the business practice, it is a very common business practice to give something for free for a time and then bill you if you don't cancel it. There is nothing illegal about it as it's all spelled out in the terms and conditions you didn't read. I avoid engaging in these offers entirely. If a company tells me it's free then fine but I won't be providing a credit card number or any other billing related information. It's not free if you ask to hold on to my money is just a scam so you can bill me later. I deal with this with Delta's Clear program. They say it's free for diamond medallion status, but they always want my credit card. That's not free then. That's just you're not charging me now and hoping I forget later.
- mtmail 6y ago
  The credit card rules converting the free trials to paid got a bit more strict recently, e.g. notifying the users before it starts https://blog.recurly.com/visas-new-free-trial-mandate-what-you-need-to-know https://blog.recurly.com/visas-new-free-trial-mandate-what-y...
- rmtech 6y ago
  Solid advice. I wish I'd heard this back in 2016. Thanks.
mtmail 6y ago
AWS went from no invoice, no billing email for 3 years to a single $500 invoice covering multiple years? No previous contact? At 0.0116 USD/h that's about 720 days, I'm surprised they wouldn't invoice sooner.
- davismwfl 6y ago
  Something is either missing or just isn't accurate in the OPs description. The likelihood of this happening is extremely remote at best but frankly IMO highly improbable period. I honestly don't believe this happened as described, but that isn't to say surprise bills don't exist on all the cloud providers. So I could see maybe the OP got a $500 bill unexpectedly, but most likely because someone found/stole an old account credential out of a public git repository (or similar) and the OP just didn't realize/know it. That makes a ton more sense and I have seen it happen quite a few times, it is an honest but costly mistake. If that is the case though, usually AWS is wiling to work with you if you just talk to them and are honest. So I am not saying the OP didn't necessarily get a surprise bill but maybe he/she is misunderstanding what happened or is just anti-AWS for whatever reason and is trying to make some point. I have been using AWS almost since the public release and I have had a few clients who hit hard times and didn't pay their AWS invoice timely over the years, a few more clients where things went from free to need to pay and they didn't. Each of them had services terminated after 30 to 60 days max, usually a smaller dollar amount AWS will let go for ~2 months but you will have received numerous emails from them first before they will terminate the account. Also, if you contact AWS and ask for a payment extension they are also usually pretty decent about it, but no, they wouldn't allow an unpaid instance to run for years. If by some chance this happened (highly doubt it) it could be a software error on AWS's side and raising it to AWS would likely result in them forgiving the bill and fixing the issue because they don't want to miss out of revenue either. My last soap box point, AWS is very clear you are responsible for the instance/service termination to avoid charges, so is Azure and GCP for that matter. They all are clear on how it works, you are responsible for reading the information and complying with the rules. IME all the cloud provides give you some latitude on payments though because if they were too aggressive with account suspensions/terminations they could get smacked for that as well, possibly even sued over lost revenue etc, so they have significant warnings/out reach which document their attempts too contact you and resolve it before they terminate to avoid that scenario.
bubba1236 6y ago
Just reach out they'll prolly cancel it

4 points by rmtech 6y ago

elmerfud 6y ago

While I don't like the business practice, it is a very common business practice to give something for free for a time and then bill you if you don't cancel it. There is nothing illegal about it as it's all spelled out in the terms and conditions you didn't read. I avoid engaging in these offers entirely. If a company tells me it's free then fine but I won't be providing a credit card number or any other billing related information. It's not free if you ask to hold on to my money is just a scam so you can bill me later. I deal with this with Delta's Clear program. They say it's free for diamond medallion status, but they always want my credit card. That's not free then. That's just you're not charging me now and hoping I forget later.

mtmail 6y ago
The credit card rules converting the free trials to paid got a bit more strict recently, e.g. notifying the users before it starts https://blog.recurly.com/visas-new-free-trial-mandate-what-you-need-to-know https://blog.recurly.com/visas-new-free-trial-mandate-what-y...
rmtech 6y ago
Solid advice. I wish I'd heard this back in 2016. Thanks.

mtmail 6y ago

AWS went from no invoice, no billing email for 3 years to a single $500 invoice covering multiple years? No previous contact? At 0.0116 USD/h that's about 720 days, I'm surprised they wouldn't invoice sooner.

davismwfl 6y ago
Something is either missing or just isn't accurate in the OPs description. The likelihood of this happening is extremely remote at best but frankly IMO highly improbable period. I honestly don't believe this happened as described, but that isn't to say surprise bills don't exist on all the cloud providers. So I could see maybe the OP got a $500 bill unexpectedly, but most likely because someone found/stole an old account credential out of a public git repository (or similar) and the OP just didn't realize/know it. That makes a ton more sense and I have seen it happen quite a few times, it is an honest but costly mistake. If that is the case though, usually AWS is wiling to work with you if you just talk to them and are honest. So I am not saying the OP didn't necessarily get a surprise bill but maybe he/she is misunderstanding what happened or is just anti-AWS for whatever reason and is trying to make some point. I have been using AWS almost since the public release and I have had a few clients who hit hard times and didn't pay their AWS invoice timely over the years, a few more clients where things went from free to need to pay and they didn't. Each of them had services terminated after 30 to 60 days max, usually a smaller dollar amount AWS will let go for ~2 months but you will have received numerous emails from them first before they will terminate the account. Also, if you contact AWS and ask for a payment extension they are also usually pretty decent about it, but no, they wouldn't allow an unpaid instance to run for years. If by some chance this happened (highly doubt it) it could be a software error on AWS's side and raising it to AWS would likely result in them forgiving the bill and fixing the issue because they don't want to miss out of revenue either. My last soap box point, AWS is very clear you are responsible for the instance/service termination to avoid charges, so is Azure and GCP for that matter. They all are clear on how it works, you are responsible for reading the information and complying with the rules. IME all the cloud provides give you some latitude on payments though because if they were too aggressive with account suspensions/terminations they could get smacked for that as well, possibly even sued over lost revenue etc, so they have significant warnings/out reach which document their attempts too contact you and resolve it before they terminate to avoid that scenario.

bubba1236 6y ago

Just reach out they'll prolly cancel it