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Comment by fron | Hacker News Reader

Woke up to a billing alarm email. Thought I had leaked my AWS keys accidentally and somehow run up 437 billion dollars of charges. Joke's on them though, I don't have 437 billion dollars

Anyways I didn't need coffee. That produced an adrenaline release unlike any I've experienced before. Thanks AWS

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If you owe AWS 437k bucks, that’s a big problem for you

If you owe AWS 437B bucks, that’s a big problem for AWS

Far less scary than a smaller amount

This number is obviously absurd but for other normal amount (say 2 million which can definitely happen with a mistake), can't they claim it in court that will bankrupt you even if your entire worth is just 100K for example?

I wonder how many people may have gotten an actual heart infarct because of that. There may be a person out there that may be dead as a result.

It's entirely irresponsible of Amazon to even display such values to the user.

Reminds me of the time a Robinhood user killed themselves after Robinhood erroneously showed their account balance at -$730k.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55990461

In that case, they settled with Robinhood and FINRA fined Robinhood 70 million dollars.

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/07/01/business/robinhood-lawsui...

"They" being the family; Robinhood couldn't settle with the guy who was wronged because he, ya know, killed himself first

Ah, there'll be something in the TOS absolving them of responsibility.

Well... That depends on the country jurisdiction. And any ToS is bounded by law and can be questioned.

Maybe AWS is also “for entertainment purposes only”

https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/05/copilot-is-for-entertainme...

I legit had a small panic attack due to this.

I'm not a devops but we are running some s3 buckets. When I saw the number I couldn't even comprehend and thought we had been hacked.

I feel like this is such a bad mistake from AWS and we will never be compensated for it.

Put me off having anything on AWS from now on.

Worth a shot to give them a call and explain that. They can probably adjust it down to 100 billion.

What is this, US health care negotiations?

https://health.amazon.com/prime

https://health.amazon.com/prime

Ugh. No. Never. Do not use Amazon Pharmacy.

I had it for three months, and each month it was unable to deliver pills before I ran out, so I cancelled and switched to the brick-and-mortar pharmacy down the street.

A year later, suddenly Amazon Pharmacy starts sending unauthorized prescription refill requests to my doctor.

I still have the account cancellation confirmation e-mail from Amazon Pharmacy, but Amazon won't close my account. Amazon's account rep says it cannot close accounts for "legal reasons." Bullshit. He can't say what the legal reasons are, or point me to a document stating these conditions.

Now my doctor's office just ignores all refill requests from Amazon Pharmacy.

Never trust your health to big tech.

It wasn't a recommendation, more of a sick joke that "Amazon has that, too".

I went through a two month long fight with AWS over a compromised account. I lost 20K even when my previous usage for the last 3 years was like $20/month, and I had more invoices coming worth tens of thousands of dollars. AWS refused to help until I stopped the breach myself, which required me to spend several all nighters after work learning how to script for AWS infra. They also refused to close my account after the breach was under control. They asked me to sign a shared responsibility agreement before they could look at my case, which I refused to do. I finally contacted the AG office in my state and they email AWS directly. In less than 24h I had a AWS manager calling me to fix my account and issue a refund for the 20K. Still, they refused to close my account after all this ordeal, apparently there’s no way for you to completely get out of AWS once you are in. It’s the shittiest business ever.

I had a similar situation where some dormant account was still charging my credit card.

The account was probably real, made for some purpose 15 years ago. I had ignored the charge for years because it was like $7 a month. Then it went to $300/month, making it worth the time. I could find no invoice email and none of my AWS accounts lined up with the bill.

I tried contacting support, but without the account number involved they had no way to help. I disputed the charge, the bank refunded that month and then went right back to charging the next month(my credit card helpfully accepted the charges despite the dispute).

I had to cancel the credit card entirely to make it stop.

Same story for $500 million. I was shaking so bad I couldn't type my password.

huge irl laugh at “i don’t have 437 billion dollars”

“Best I can do for you is $3.75 and a cup of coffee.”

Clearly the Agentic AI is running free on AWS. Matt does it again...what a success...

I was trying to go to sleep when I got mine. It was certainly above the $16 threshold I had set!

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