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.

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?

user:	theginger
created:	February 9, 2020
karma:	675