5 ms·

Hey everyone, Thariq from the Claude Code team. We've been on this since the bug surfaced. Everyone affected is getting a full refund and an extra grant of usa

• reactordev 5mo ago
  "Our support flow wasn't set up" Would be more accurate. It still isn't setup. Talking to a bot as support who only tells you to talk to the bot for support is not actually support at all. It looks like support, but there's no way to ACTUALLY GET support.
• KolmogorovComp 5mo ago
  https://xcancel.com/trq212/status/2048495545375990245 https://xcancel.com/trq212/status/2048495545375990245
• whicks 5mo ago
  Thanks for the follow up here and the transparency. For those of us not on X, what are the best communication channels for us to follow this sort of communication?
  • gowld 5mo ago
    [flagged]
  • mystraline 5mo ago
    I'd recommend a good credit card like Amex, and a lawyer. These fucks only respond when they get bad publicity.
    • quietsegfault 5mo ago
      Amex, like basically all other card issuers, have essentially stopped giving customers preference in chargebacks since 2020 or so. What used to be solid advice now rings hollow - you’re more likely to be asked for information that not available to you than allowing your chargeback to go through.
      • abustamam 5mo ago
        Anecdotal but Chase helped me out when my gym kept charging me after I canceled. I kept my cancelation receipt and sent that in and that's all I needed to do.
• pshirshov 5mo ago
  But why did you say that > I need to let you know that we are unable to issue compensation for degraded service or technical errors that result in incorrect billing routing. What prevents you from issuing compensations?
  • Rebelgecko 5mo ago
    As a large language model, their support is not allowed to issue compensation
    • JoshTriplett 5mo ago
      https://simonwillison.net/2025/Feb/3/a-computer-can-never-be-held-accountable/ https://simonwillison.net/2025/Feb/3/a-computer-can-never-be...
    • idiotsecant 5mo ago
      Interestingly, the starlink customer service bot has applied credits to my account before.
    • quietsegfault 5mo ago
      I know this is a joke, but Amazon’s bots give me compensation literally all the time when something goes wrong. It’s possible.
      • pshirshov 5mo ago
        Same experience. Literally yesterday it refunded me for a thermos shattered by the delivery guys.
      • _heimdall 5mo ago
        Of course its possible, its just a permissions decision.
  • rurp 5mo ago
    That's a very categorical statement from support. I get that Anthropic is going to throw out their usual support rules in this case since it has garnered so much negative attention, but I'm very curious how many other people have been over-billed and refused a refund through no fault of their own.
• gowld 5mo ago
  [dead]
• cmpb 5mo ago
  Could really use a post-mortem to set the story straight. The apparently-hallucinated support response copied-pasted by the submitter showing up in the github issue thread is very misleading without scrutiny
  • hirako2000 5mo ago
    Weekly postmortem at this rate.
  • crooked-v 5mo ago
    It's only "very misleading" if Anthropic has implemented an actual support system in the meantime.
• resonious 5mo ago
  Is it complex? I was somewhat taken aback by how simple it was. Still very confused as to how it could happen.
  • zamalek 5mo ago
    Only the weights and the RNG used to select tokens can answer that. You will understand much if you read up on the quality of code in the CC source leak, it's completely vibe coded and the printf fn is genuinely impossible for a human to comprehend.
• bashtoni 5mo ago
  You also seem to have a bug where people get randomly invoiced: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47693679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47693679 I got a random invoice for $45.08 back in March, despite not having auto top up enabled. Trying to reach support met with a brick wall. Based on the post I linked to, I'm not the only one facing this problem.
  • mdavidn 5mo ago
    They also have a bug where people get randomly suspended: https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1b82cpu/where_you_recently_suspended_by_anthropic_for/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1b82cpu/where_you... It happened this year to my one and only personal account. The account was one week old. Unique e-mail address. $5 balance for API credits. No usage yet. Suspended and refunded. Appeal denied without explanation. I did create the account on a VPN because I was using public WiFi at a tech conference. That's probably what tripped their automation.
    • iammrpayments 5mo ago
      Using certain types of cards will get you automatically banned, I’ve found that out after getting 3 accounts suspended. I made them all using same VPN and email domain. I’ve been using the 4th account with no issues with a reputable bank debit card.
  • ethin 5mo ago
    I also got randomly invoiced $5.00 for absolutely no reason on the 28th. I don't have auto-reload enabled, nor did I explicitly buy extra usage.
  • dvcrn 5mo ago
    Happened to me too but my card didn’t actually get charged, maybe check yours. Also the card in the invoice wasn’t even the card I’m using with Anthropic
    • bashtoni 5mo ago
• sroussey 5mo ago
  Have a look at https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/54497 https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/54497 I can’t use Claude Code online at all
  • mococa 5mo ago
    I have the same issue when I try to run /ultraplan
    • sroussey 5mo ago
      I tried /debug as the only input, hoping CC wouldn’t shit the bed and give me some data. Heck, just saying “hello” causes Claude Code to fail. I’m thinking of doing a charge back, and creating a new account. Others don’t seem to have this issue.
  • 2ndorderthought 5mo ago
    Sorry but you have to make a separate HN post for them to care. Wait like 2 hours so this one dies down otherwise it might not get to the front page with enough other people dealing with it
    • sroussey 5mo ago
      I tried and it got no feedback.
      • 2ndorderthought 5mo ago
        Can people please raise this person's comment to the top of HN by upvoting it so this person can get their money back. Because that's where we are right now.
• angoragoats 5mo ago
  [flagged]
• jiggawatts 5mo ago
  Please do explain why someone at Anthropic decided, on purpose, to write code that says something along the lines of: "if ( git_history_str contains "HERMES.md" ... )" then { bill more money } Somebody (or something) wrote this code. This bug wouldn't be happening for any other reason. It's not a glitch, an oversight, a feature gap, or a temporary outage. It is a piece of written code in your system. Everyone here is upset about the $200, which is probably much less money than the time that engineer spent ranting about the overcharge on GitHub. The real problem in my mind is that that bit of code existed in the first place. Why? Are you vibe coding your billing!? Without review!?!? Or worse, a human being decided to add this to your code base? And nobody noticed or flagged it during code review? Or much, much worse, Anthropic is purposefully ripping off customers? This deserves a thorough post-mortem.
  • cerved 5mo ago
    Anthropic obviously vibe code everything and it shows
  • csoups14 5mo ago
    Would imagine it's the simplest answer: they're flying by the seat of their pants, there's 1000 things happening every day that demand attention and there's not enough of it to go around. They toss their LLM at it, give it a cursory glance, and ship it. A quick glance at the Claude Code source code bears the result of this process out. The fundamental question is, if their model is so powerful, why do they keep fucking up such simple things? We're led to believe this is a serious company with a model so powerful they can't release it to the general public.
    • jiggawatts 5mo ago
      I doubt an AI would be stupid enough to write code like that without being explicitly prompted to do so. It's so... specific. That specific nature would mean it would get caught by even the most cursory of code reviews. Even if I was just "scanning my eyeballs over the code" without properly reading it, this would jump out as very odd and make me pause.
• deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
• quietsegfault 5mo ago
  I’ve had similar terrible experiences with the Claude support bot when my usage limit was disappearing after a few minutes using Sonnet. I asked for help, asked for escalation, asked for a human, anything. All I got was a non-answers from an AI. I won’t spend real money on Claude now. I’m ok with losing $20 if there’s a rug pull of one way or another, but not $200. Please, please, please hire more humans with the actual ability to do the right thing for support if your AI agents can’t do the job.
• Perseids 5mo ago
  A side aspect of this drama is the root feature which enabled this bug: > ugh sorry this was a bug with the 3rd party harness detection and how we pull git status into the system prompt Claude wants to exercise control of how I use the "inclusive volume" that I purchased with my monthly subscription. This harms competition (someone else could write a more efficient or safer coding agent) and is generally not in the best interest of society. Why do we allow this? This specific case is interesting, because it is so clear cut. There is no cross financing via ads, they already have the infrastructure to measure usage and even the infrastructure to bill extra usage. I also don't see how you can plausible make the argument that restricting usage to their blessed client is necessary for fair use or for the basic structure of their business model (this would be the standard argument for e.g. Youtube: Purposefully degrading the experience of their free client to not support background playback enables the subscription model).
• MithrilTuxedo 5mo ago
  Is there no constraint preventing extra usage billing from being used before regular usage billing has been exhausted?
• sensanaty 5mo ago
  [flagged]
  • deaux 5mo ago
    That being flagged is completely absurd and honestly I believe you're right because I've never seen anything like it on HN. It's completely out of place for that comment to be flagged to death. That isn't natural.
    • yorwba 5mo ago
      It wasn't flagged. Compare to this comment by the same user that was actually flagged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47954834 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47954834 Note the part where it says [flagged] [dead] instead of just [dead].
      • deaux 5mo ago
        That seems.. worse? What would've caused this?
        • eudamoniac 5mo ago
          I vouched for it, but I wouldn't be surprised if my vouch has been shadow-disabled. It's still dead.
          • deaux 5mo ago
            I just don't get what would cause that to happen on that comment.
            • eudamoniac 5mo ago
              The shadow cabal
• shj2105 5mo ago
  hey guys can you please fix claude design? I've been trying to test it tonight and already used up 20% of my usage and all i get is continuous [unknown] missing EndStreamResponse errors (and this is after your status page reflected everything ok).
• areoform 5mo ago
  Hey Thariq, I love Claude! I use Claude every single day and it has changed my life, which is why I did what I'm about to describe. Happy to talk privately, but as I detailed here, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47954005 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47954005 . I've been billed $200 for a Max gift card to a 27 character alphanumeric icloud address that bounces. I was looking through the system, and there are several UI/UX and process gaps in the gift card and billing order flow that expose Anthropic to significant liability. I'm genuinely not trying to concern troll or make some kind of overwrought threat here. Genuinely trying to be constructive. Let me give you an example. I sent an email to Anthropic Support outlining the disputed / possibly malicious charge. The AI Agent / Claude instance agreed and replied with, Thank you for confirming. I've documented all the details about this unauthorized [specific amount + tax] charge for the Gift Max 20X subscription (invoice [lalala]) sent to [insert the random alphanumeric]@icloud.com. An error occurred while evaluating the refund eligibility for your account. Your request has been fully documented and our team will follow up with you shortly to investigate this unauthorized transaction and assist with the refund and cancellation. Best regards, And then no one followed up, the conversation was closed without recourse and I wasn't allowed to reply. I'm not sure how familiar you are with international trading practises, but in multiple jurisdictions, the AI agent assumed legal liability for Anthropic. It accepted that the charge was unauthorized / fraudulent, stated that redressal was needed, but then failed to offer the means to redress it / didn't allow for the refund to continue. I am not a lawyer, but based on my understanding of prior cases (I read this kind of stuff for fun, don't ask) – in the EU, the US and Canada, users can approach courts and invoke the doctrine of promissory estoppel (again don't quote me on this, IANAL, just like reading case law). And if enough users are affected / do so, it becomes a deceptive practises issue. I've been thinking about how to solve this problem, and as strange as it sounds, I think Anthropic already has the tools to make the best customer support service in human history. No exaggeration. I think that this crisis could be an opportunity.
  • dboreham 5mo ago
    Apparently we are now expected to know by some telepathic mechanism that important customer service announcements are made only on Twitter.
• blitzar 5mo ago
  I have been badly affected - it killed my vibe.
• Robin_Message 5mo ago
  > Our support flow wasn't set up to route a complex bug like this to engineering. What does that even mean? Does it mean, "our support flow is just an LLM that fobs off customers and puts their issues into the bin"? Or is there some genuine "routing" of simple bugs to engineering which accidentally drops "complex" bugs? Could you drescibe that process, it sounds fascinating? Also, how is changing a customer's billing based on detecting a certain string in a certain place a "complex" bug? Grep the string, remove the if statement, done. I'd love a post-mortem about why this was a complex bug. More questions than answers here Thariq.
• efromvt 5mo ago
  I try to avoid jumping on the bandwagon when it's already covered but billing bugs being treated like other software issue and the major comms channel being X (which I can't get to load half the time) is ridiculous.