I tried multiple times to get a human on the phone to discuss it. Every time I requested a callback, AWS would call, a bot would tell me the human wasn't available, and promise a callback. No human ever called back.
So I stopped paying. Why keep paying charges I believe are wrong when the company won't discuss them?
AWS emailed asking if my case was resolved — from a no-reply address. Nobody followed up.
Feb 19: AWS suspended my account. Route 53 DNS down. Domain, business email, website — all dead instantly.
Feb 21: I paid the $1,600 outstanding bill. AWS took the money. Account stayed locked. Why? While I was resolving that bill, another $1,500 bill came in. But because they had already locked me out, I couldn't see it, access it, or pay it. They kept me locked out over a bill they wouldn't let me pay.
The catch-22: my support plan included callbacks when the account was active. Suspending the account killed my support tier. So now I can't request a callback because I'm no longer on a plan that gets callbacks. Because they suspended it.
I can't get support because they killed my support tier. I can't pay the bill because they locked me out of the console. Every support channel is a dead end — phones loop, emails bounce, forms require the login they disabled, can't even create a new account because my phone number is blocked.
@AWSSupport on X responded in seconds, pushed me to DMs, promised internal escalation. 24+ hours later, nothing.
Here is what I think is really happening: AWS has no incentive to resolve billing disputes. Every month of delay is another $1,500. A five-minute call reviewing my CloudWatch metrics would show the charges are wrong — but that call would cost them $1,500/month in revenue. Instead they are holding my domain, my email, and my website hostage.
What I want is simple:
1. Turn my DNS back on right now. There is no justification for holding my domain and email hostage over a billing dispute. 2. Call me — a human — to review a year of invoices. Based on my actual usage, AWS owes me thousands back, not the other way around.
Day 4. Emails will start permanently bouncing within 24-48 hours.
Case 177075616300933. Has anyone gotten through this? Any path to a real person when your account is suspended?
I'd start with doing a full chargeback for all months, and provide as much documentation.
Additionally, I'd reach out to folks like Ars Technica, after ensuring such an issue was not a result of my own error.
One big red flag with this story is that OP seemingly did not notice $1,500/mo coming out of his account. That is most certainly something that anyone would have noticed, even someone making a few million a year, and if you make that much money, you definitely are paying an accountant to manage your accounts.
The story smells off.
EDIT: Oh and I'm not denying that customer support at AWS and other places has gone way downhill which IS a problem, however, there is no way this story is realistically true. At the very least, the numbers were inflated in order to draw in attention. No normal person overlooks an additional $1,500+ per month bill on their bank statement. Even small businesses would've been all over that. I know, I've worked for and managed them, along with being a senior software engineer and manager.
Probably a great reminder for everyone not to park your domain in the same place you do everything else.
Also, why are you paying 18k for resources you aren't using?
> AWS has been charging me $1,500/month for near-zero usage. For over a year. That is more than $18,000 for infrastructure I barely use.
Did you provision the infrastructure?
Feel there is more to this story than AWS being mean.
You can try emailing garman@amazon.com and complain about the poor AWS customer service with Jeff cc’d.
It's 2026.
Go get a lawyer if you feel you're right.
Again maybe you are aware, but it wasn't clear from your post.
In here (not the US) a chargeback is such a chore that I would only do that as a very last resort.
But AWS doesn’t charge by the usage of allocated resources. They charge by the allocation of those resources. Have 50 EC2 instances at 0% CPU? Amazon sat them aside for you, as promised, yet you chose not to use what you paid for. That’s not their fault.
By analogy, a restaurant charges you for a steak, whether or not you eat it. Unless it’s defective, you bought it and you pay for it. And if you don’t want to donate $1500/mo to the AWS Steak House, stop ordering the ribeye.
The whole thing of paying $1500 per month for "near zero usage" ENTIRE year without complaining or checking billing is nuts. Am I just poor or is it a result of American credit card based system?
By the way if you think AWS cares how much you use EC2 instances that you provisioned you are mistaken. EC2 is a VPS. You wouldn't expect Hetzner to charge you less if you rented a server and then didn't use it.
Only if you know how to dig to see anything more detailed then a vague product name like EC2
I think if you, from the US (i believe), cannot get them to help you, i (from a third world country) don't stand a chance.
A couple of managed DB instances and a decently sized ec2 will do that.
They said that with the Ai chat bot, you can just say contact me with a human, and a human can/would then must be contacted.
I wonder if this could've been done by you. can anyone who uses amazon's services verify my claims?