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?
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.
> 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?
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.
Many states have codified tort laws as being in the interest of public policy (e.g. most consumer protection acts). If this person were to sue under such a statute, it allows courts discretion in nullifying clauses like this arbitration clause.
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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?
It's 2026.
Go get a lawyer if you feel you're right.
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