6 ms·

PM at AWS, writing on my own personal behalf. Sorry to hear that you had a bad experience. That's definitely not the culture that I'm experiencing every day or

by geertj 5y ago

PM at AWS, writing on my own personal behalf. Sorry to hear that you had a bad experience. That's definitely not the culture that I'm experiencing every day or that we hold ourselves to. Our goal is to deliver a ton of value to customers. If we are not delivering value then it would not be in line with how we operate to want to charge you for that. Out of curiosity, did you try contacting AWS support? Almost all customers I speak to love our support and the fact they can speak to an actual human. Of course I can't speak to the actual case as I'm just providing my personal opinion here, but I would not be surprised if support could fix this for you quickly and zero out any small balances that you accrued because you weren't able to access/use your account.

tomrod 5y ago
With all due respect, it has nothing to do with culture and more to do with business processes having rough edges. At AWS' scale, any rough edge is more than a rare edge case, since rarity flies out the window. Spending more to provide better customer service (explicitly or implicitly through bugfixes) is not generally how this type of need is. Folks shouldn't need to post their grievances to a very public site to be heard, and that it needs to happen to get traction on an issue should be taken as a clear gap in customer service provision.
- belval 5y ago
  That's kind of his point though, OP did not need to post to HN, he can just contact AWS Support and get the bucket deleted at (probably) no charge. Support will routinely give forgive an account balance given a good enough reason.
  - tomrod 5y ago
    From the comment: > I've had to ask my credit card company to block AWS charging an account that I can't remember the login to. We don't know whether OP has reached out to AWS support, but one can assume so since AWS is charging an account the user cannot log in to. Further, it sounds like the user has found their own resolution, so the user isn't asking for _help_ on HN, more that they are registering poor experience in agreement with others. So, it is a rough UX edge.
    - belval 5y ago
      You wrote: > Folks shouldn't need to post their grievances to a very public site to be heard, and that it needs to happen to get traction on an issue should be taken as a clear gap in customer service provision. Yet by your very own comment you say that we don't know if he actually tried to contact support so there is no "clear gap in customer service provision". The fact is, anyone who actually interacted with an AWS rep would tell you that they would delete the bucket and not charge you for it.
  - tharkun__ 5y ago
    From my own experience, no you can't. All links to cknta t support require you to have an active AWS account. That defeats the purpose. YMMV as in maybe it's different today but that was my experience. And I was just trying to them to stop sending me spam after I had closed out my account.
- slownews45 5y ago
  It's weird to see hackers here posting this as AWS is literally the only web scale company I can actually talk to a person at to resolve rough edges. This is both on retail side and AWS side. My only request - do some more automated discovery and remediation tooling for VPC-classic accounts! It's annoying to figure out what needs to be handled there - give me a dashboard for this.
TimTheTinker 5y ago
I'd really be curious how much money AWS makes on zero-usage accounts where someone spun up something and then forgot how to log in or delete it. I've been paying $10/month for over a year on an EC2 (I think?) instance I spun up, and I still haven't had the time to go in and find it and delete it. I've tried several times (and even disputed the credit card charge one month). I'll probably just end up cancelling this credit card. That would be a lot easier than figuring out how to stop AWS from charging me.
- andrewxdiamond 5y ago
  > I'll probably just end up cancelling this credit card. That would be a lot easier than figuring out how to stop AWS from charging me. Nooooo no no no that is not true. If you cancel, this debt will follow you on your credit history and via collectors. Canceling a CC does not waive you of responsibility. Just contact AWS support. Tell them your story. They’ll get your account closed and they’ll probably forgive whatever outstanding bill you have. Please don’t just run away from the bill, you’re just setting yourself up for pain later.
  - TimTheTinker 5y ago
    I've actually contacted them via email multiple times, and they never respond. At this point, they're legally committing fraud. I don't see how closing a credit card that has regular fraudulent transactions is wrong, or likely to cause problems later on.
    - slownews45 5y ago
      They are absolutely not commiting fraud - that is a total lie. If some random wants to contact amazon to delete our business AWS account they need to reject that as well. I would login, open a account and billing support case. Do Account / Close and cancel my account They will give you a chat or call back option in most cases. The call back option has worked well for me.
      - 5y ago

by geertj 5y ago

tomrod 5y ago

With all due respect, it has nothing to do with culture and more to do with business processes having rough edges. At AWS' scale, any rough edge is more than a rare edge case, since rarity flies out the window. Spending more to provide better customer service (explicitly or implicitly through bugfixes) is not generally how this type of need is. Folks shouldn't need to post their grievances to a very public site to be heard, and that it needs to happen to get traction on an issue should be taken as a clear gap in customer service provision.

belval 5y ago
That's kind of his point though, OP did not need to post to HN, he can just contact AWS Support and get the bucket deleted at (probably) no charge. Support will routinely give forgive an account balance given a good enough reason.
- tomrod 5y ago
  From the comment: > I've had to ask my credit card company to block AWS charging an account that I can't remember the login to. We don't know whether OP has reached out to AWS support, but one can assume so since AWS is charging an account the user cannot log in to. Further, it sounds like the user has found their own resolution, so the user isn't asking for _help_ on HN, more that they are registering poor experience in agreement with others. So, it is a rough UX edge.
  - belval 5y ago
    You wrote: > Folks shouldn't need to post their grievances to a very public site to be heard, and that it needs to happen to get traction on an issue should be taken as a clear gap in customer service provision. Yet by your very own comment you say that we don't know if he actually tried to contact support so there is no "clear gap in customer service provision". The fact is, anyone who actually interacted with an AWS rep would tell you that they would delete the bucket and not charge you for it.
- tharkun__ 5y ago
  From my own experience, no you can't. All links to cknta t support require you to have an active AWS account. That defeats the purpose. YMMV as in maybe it's different today but that was my experience. And I was just trying to them to stop sending me spam after I had closed out my account.
slownews45 5y ago
It's weird to see hackers here posting this as AWS is literally the only web scale company I can actually talk to a person at to resolve rough edges. This is both on retail side and AWS side. My only request - do some more automated discovery and remediation tooling for VPC-classic accounts! It's annoying to figure out what needs to be handled there - give me a dashboard for this.

TimTheTinker 5y ago

I'd really be curious how much money AWS makes on zero-usage accounts where someone spun up something and then forgot how to log in or delete it. I've been paying $10/month for over a year on an EC2 (I think?) instance I spun up, and I still haven't had the time to go in and find it and delete it. I've tried several times (and even disputed the credit card charge one month). I'll probably just end up cancelling this credit card. That would be a lot easier than figuring out how to stop AWS from charging me.

andrewxdiamond 5y ago
> I'll probably just end up cancelling this credit card. That would be a lot easier than figuring out how to stop AWS from charging me. Nooooo no no no that is not true. If you cancel, this debt will follow you on your credit history and via collectors. Canceling a CC does not waive you of responsibility. Just contact AWS support. Tell them your story. They’ll get your account closed and they’ll probably forgive whatever outstanding bill you have. Please don’t just run away from the bill, you’re just setting yourself up for pain later.
- TimTheTinker 5y ago
  I've actually contacted them via email multiple times, and they never respond. At this point, they're legally committing fraud. I don't see how closing a credit card that has regular fraudulent transactions is wrong, or likely to cause problems later on.
  - slownews45 5y ago
    They are absolutely not commiting fraud - that is a total lie. If some random wants to contact amazon to delete our business AWS account they need to reject that as well. I would login, open a account and billing support case. Do Account / Close and cancel my account They will give you a chat or call back option in most cases. The call back option has worked well for me.
    - 5y ago