The deeper into the new world order, the more you'll be charged for every breath, by design and by bugs-as-features all the same, refunds be against technofascist manifestos.

https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/53262#issue...

Allow users to file a lawsuit against the company using AI against their customers and judge the company only on what the AI generated without a chance to add anything more in their defense. Also any boilerplate legalese the AIs will quote in reaction to such laws is null and void.

Suddenly every AI support channel will have an "escalate to human support" button.

Anthropic will need to make sure that i am never charged beyond my subscription fees before I consider a sub.

The person who created the PR is user "sasha-id".

The person saying no to the refund is also user "sasha-id".

What?

Where was it exactly thats someone from Anthropic said no to a refund request? I feel I am missing the obvious somehow.

I can’t believe they paid 100m for some of these employees. They could have bought entire companies of real developers.

Ah yes, cause who bothers to test any releases to actual paying customers

A. Do shady shit to try to hurt competitors/stop distillation/stop pro plan users using other coding harnesses/etc.

B. Any shady shit that gets viral enough gets a PR apology response and removed.

C. Add new shady shit. GoTo => A.

And I am incredulous as to how this opinion is not more widespread.

I would have jumped ship, but OpenAI saying "hold my beer" when Anthropic declined the Pentagon's safeguard removal demands is the only thing that has prevented me from jumping ship. I've considered Chinese AI services but I'm too concerned with data (proprietary code) exfiltration.

When you've been a Software Engineer for a while you start to be able to put bugs in certain buckets.

Then there is the last bucket, like the X-Files. They don't belong anywhere else. They have no specific reason. They happened because of a weird set of circumstances, usually due to too many developers working on the same product, without proper abstractions and separations.

And having spent too much time that I'd like working and reviewing code generated by AI, this is exactly what the AI does. It doesn't abstract. It doesn't separate. It just does what it is asked, not that different from the quality of code from outsourcing contractors.

No response from customer service.. only their AI Agent Support.. Which has still not offered me a refund.

I may have to do a chargeback.

For example, chatgpt when asked "How to report a billing issue with Anthropic subscription?" says:

Best way: Use Claude’s built-in support Log in to your Claude account at Anthropic / Claude.ai Click your initials or name in the lower-left corner Select “Get help” Use the support messenger to describe your billing issue (duplicate charge, failed renewal, refund request, missing credits, invoice issue, etc.)

I got a $2 charge for a Facebook Ad (I know, $2 is nothing and I shouldn't use Meta), and it was completely wrong. It's impossible to talk to someone in Facebook about this. The AI chat is completely clueless and can't do anything. Their help page say you can ask for a refund (I can't, because the payment doesn't appear on the billing page or payment activity), but they tell you they will close your account if you do it, like... wtf?

I am scared for the future where AI handles all of this. It should be ilegal. Companies should have a X support people every Y customers or something like that. I see it everyday and it's getting worse and worse...

Some days I think the only solution is what Bombita did in the movie Relatos Salvajes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP3IwmM3XLQ

you will do it again because you are an all-day sucker

Just refuse to pay any bill from any vendor that by their own public admission) is a "incorrect bill".

This isn't just about PR and technicalities, this is Business 101.

English is not my first language, so I might have misunderstood....

There should have been a two layer approach:

1. Run regex to screen for target word

2. If positive, run the context through a cheap AI model

I think people put this out of proportion. Yes, you can reason this is ethically correct - I don't object to this. But people used Anthropic, Claude etc... in the first place. Why would you use something to then be disappointed about how it performs, when it comes to AI? Would not be the better and easier strategy to ... not use it in the first place, and make yourself dependable on AI? I don't fully understand this. I would not run into a similar situation because I simply don't use any AI. I actively want to support those folks who don't use AI either - that way we can point out all the ill effects of AI, such as in the case of Anthropic to prioritize on greed.

What a claude excuse

~~I mean, the worse part is the gif at the end of the message.~~

~~What are they even trying to do? What are they trying to convey? It just feels like being given the finger and getting my face rubbed in it on top of that.~~

Granted, it was very much weasel words.

Nonetheless, I read it as they were issuing a refund ("Let me look up your account information to help process your refund request."), but couldn't offer compensation for pain, suffering, loss of use, tracking down the bug, etc.

I could be wrong, of course, precisely because it was (probably AI-generated) weasel words.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/02/air-canada-must-...

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.

Why would that vendor want to do business with a customer that doesn’t pay their bills (whether justified or not)?

It went massive on Reddit which is where I heard about it first.

A classic.

    Follow up note -> Yep, it's automated and DOES give access to their docs. ;)
    
    Their insurance levels don't really seem to be anywhere near what I'd expect frankly. To me, they look much lower than even entry level mandatory company insurance for brand new businesses at least in Australia. o_O

For b2c, no chance

I think the problem is clear. Anthropic saw their usage go up much more than their capacity could handle. There are a few tried and true solutions to this, like "increase the price" or "restrict signups so you can guarantee service to what you have already sold".

Then there is the "large scale fraud" option, where you materially change and degrade the service you have already sold. Just because you have obfuscated and mislead in how you describe the product you are selling doesn't mean you get to capture the cash flow of 1 year subscriptions then not honor that contract for the full duration.

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.

I've got a local setup too but unless you consider hardware zero cost, there is really no way to save money. The class of model you can run on <$5k of hardware is dirt cheap to run in the cloud (generating tokens 24/7 non-stop is a few dollars a day at most, possibly even less than the cost of electricity to do it at home).

I think part of the issue is they were letting people use plan's API for random stuff, so people could do testing or small projects. Then the agents came along and exploded the cost, so they want to restrict those but still let some other usage, which I don't think is tenable.

I'm sure there is some way that they could enforce that all calls are coming from the Claude app or Claude Code. It might be hard to 100% enforce, with stuff running on a user's machine, but they could still could make it quite difficult, where someone has to be intentionally trying beat the system (like stealing encryption keys out of the Claude Code binary or something).

I don't see anything wrong with this. My integrity and values are above any company's. Companies can go to hell for all I care

if they can't do anything about it now, what makes you think that situation will change in the future? if remedial action would be punished by those higher on the ladder, it certainly won't be promoted by those folks, leaving this hypothetical employee in exactly the same position they're currently in.

quit.

So basically all of big tech.

An IC won't be able to steer a ship like that back to morality. Whole teams can't do it. People at Google organized to stop this sort of shit and were fired IIRC?

Large institutions provide cover for bad actions by people who, without said cover, would not take those actions.

Therefore, I believe that "we'd be left with only people who are cynical and/or bad and/or sufficiently indentured to be unable to push back against management, and there would be no hope of the company ever improving" is the status quo.

So what are you even saying??

How about Anthropic agreeing to a $1.5 billion settlement for perhaps the biggest theft in history?

Weird how people forgot about that.

Of course, I suspect the true business model to be to do nothing. You sell the "service" to people customers, but your enterprise customers pay you a subscription fee to not execute the order. ELaaS: Everybody Loses as a Service

My StubHub story: bought $500 tickets and accidentally bought ones in the dsabled seating section. Called 2 minutes after purchase when I realized - their response "you can relist them on the site". Who else was going to buy them?? Nobody did. Any normal human business would let you correct a basic human mistake like this, not even 10 mins after purchase, but not stubhub. They could have upsold me and I probably would have left happy! At least I could have attended. Cost me $500 but cost them a lifetime of emnity

So, you can waste as much of their money as they wasted of yours.

All roads, inevitably, lead to two minutes hate. The man was a prophet.

Honestly what really egged me on was that I told them I might take them to small claims, and their response was sending a bunch of small claims cases they won.

I’m coming up on my one year anniversary of having my Claude Pro account terminated for reasons that to this day remain an utter mystery. “Here, submit this Google form and we’ll look at it.” They have never done so in the one year since this happened. Once I interacted with what seemed like a human; but weeks later it was replaced with the brain dead fin.ai

At least they did not steal my money; so I should be grateful for that. But as a small potatoes user, I advise everyone contemplating dealing with this user-disrespecting company to walk away.

You’re not going to get an email telling you that you’re banned. Your payments will just start being declined, and they won’t be able to help you. They’ll suggest you try another card. That won’t work either.

Maxmind includes a “chargeback risk score” in the api response for everybody who uses their minfraud service. They’re not doing that because companies don’t use it.

A scammer went to the trouble of creating an entirely different ebay account registered to literally "pirate[xxxxx]@..." using my same name. Then they found a tracking number to my same zip code. Then they bought (fake) items from a second scammer account using my stolen credit card to "wash" the money.

When I filed a chargeback ebay came back with a fat stack of paperwork and absolutely fucking buried me. They had the tracking number to "me", they had "me", they had the invoices to "me", they had my credit card, and their lengthy report had all the right words in all the right places and dressed up in all the right banking mumbo-jumbo and they convinced my bank so well that my bank suggested I was a fraudster myself and then my bank closed my accounts. I couldn't even sue them because at that precise time I moved cross country and couldn't get to the court to sue them in. I ended up eating the better part of $1000.

Ebay is absolutely fucking savage at chargebacks. They appear to have people trained specifically to bury in paperwork anyone that tries to challenge fraudulent charges.

Not petty of you IMO. It's what everyone ought to do but it's inconvenient so most people don't.

Obviously, I don't know for a fact what Anthropic's motivations are, but I don't believe I'm being overly optimistic because I know for a fact that "use a third party as a way to de-risk" is a tried and true strategy. E.g. when I was at Facebook, all regular day-to-day comms were on Workplace, but they kept an IRC server hosted by some vendor or other, specifically to coordinate responses for serious SEVs that disrupted the normal channels.

Of course, an even simpler explanation is that they perceive building their own support harness as just low value work for engineers who could be working on their core product instead, and the cost of buying that service from somebody else is probably a drop in the ocean.

In the old days where we didn't depend on services and everything was local even if you needed something truly arcane if you knew where to ask you could find a niche expert willing to help out or at least that's how I remember it. Nowadays if you have a problem with a service you literally are shit out of luck because there is absolutely NOTHING you can do about it, you can't debug it, you can't hack it, NOTHING.

I do not believe that refusing to do business with an individual, where your business provides a non-life-critical service, is retaliation. A water company refusing to provide water to your home would be problematic. A luxury handbag store refusing to allow you to purchase more luxury handbags would not.

Image as a hypothetical that a customer goes into your store for the sole purpose of wasting your support staff's time. They are not going to make a purchase. They are also not directly committing a crime. They are just hurting your business for no particular reason.

Should you, as a business owner, be forced to allow them to continue to be on your property?

I think the ideal answer is yes for critical public spaces, and no for ordinary retail.

Steam clearly falls into the latter category and should be free to ban customers for any reason save discrimination against protected classes.

Fuck I hate being old and having to be on this side now.

The keeper can accept cash and checks, but not credit or debit cards.[1] So, while the keeper is present, the business cannot accept card payments. This disrupts most businesses so badly that they desperately scramble to come up with cash to pay their debt.[2] It gets the message across to management very effectively.

I've done this once. I got paid in full.

[1] https://sfsheriff.com/services/civil-processes/levies/carry-...

[2] https://www.grundonlaw.com/the-power-of-till-taps-debt-colle...

If that doesn't work, you can always go to the police/bailiff with the court order and schedule a date/time for them to go with you to their offices to seize and auction off their stuff.

small claims court might not work against a dodgy builder, but it will certainly work against a company, with physical offices

if they don't pay up, you can literally walk into their offices and start taking their stuff, with the police supporting you

I'd start with the contents of Amodei's office

A plaintiff won a judgment. He asked the judge: “what do I do now?” The judge replied: “well, if you’re reading the paper one day and see ‘defendant wins the Powerball,’ then you know exactly what to do.”

Everyone all files in for the session and the Judge patiently explains... "we do not do enforcement here, to be very clear. A judgment in small claims means the court agrees you are owed what is owed in the judgment, no more. You can contain the Sheriff's Department, etc., for arranging enforcement of the judgment..."

Sure as shit, first case on the docket is some landlord/tenant dispute. Gets figured out and one of the parties is awarded $1,200... Very next comment out of his mouth, "Where do I go to pick up that check?" Judge, with a sigh, "As I explained twelve minutes ago, small claims court does not do enforcement". "I thought I went up front and picked up my check and then you got the money from him." "No. I am ... unclear ... why you think that would be the case."

I found myself wryly amused by this. Like the court is just cutting checks for every awarded verdict and "oh, we'll figure out how to make the loser pay somehow, but here, you don't need to worry about that, here's your check".

>can even download those

So what you're saying is I should find a fat juicy data pipe somewhere and download stuff from Steam until I fill /dev/null... ;oP

Seriously the. 15 minutes or so of support time will have cost more than the game did in this case, but it really is the principle. Stealing lots of small amounts from lots of people is still criminally dishonest.

We got to the point that the other party just didn't show up, and the judge just set a new date multiple times...

The judge could've gone for a bench warrant, where a sheriff picks up the person the day before to make sure they're present... But that also didn't happen.

If there's no physical store, just cross your fingers they pay the judgement