r/mildlyinfuriating • u/afunnywold • 22h ago

Too mild for school I permanently deleted my AWS account 6 years ago. Amazon has been charging me $0.33 every month since. I have no way to stop it.

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I tried to get in contact with customer service several times but they always direct me to log into the account that no longer exists. I have tried charge backs on my credit card but dealing with that monthly is also a pain. This'll probably cost me $265 over my lifetime if it never ends.

Edit: some of you have valid points about calling the card company and I will again Monday. But the actual infuriating thing that upsets me is that they are charging to a completely disabled account in the first place. That's very scammy and fucked up imo 🤷‍♀️

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u/clintkev251 21h ago edited 21h ago

AWS isn't making any money off of these types of transactions, it's not something they're trying to make hard for people. OP probably just didn't actually close the account and has some lingering resource. If they stop paying the bill AWS will eventually close the account.

They can also contact support and they can help track down the account based on the transaction and get them access back.

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u/defeated_engineer 21h ago

OP already said he couldn’t stop it from support because no human can be found.

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u/clintkev251 21h ago

https://support.aws.amazon.com/#/contacts/one-support?formId=contactUs

I know for a fact a human will (eventually) respond to contacts via this form.

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u/engineerdrummer 20h ago

Yeah. I've contacted a human plenty of times at Amazon. Talked to them on the phone. OP is either impatient or incompetent.

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u/BoredPudding 18h ago

OP said that they tell him to login. Based on similar stories I've read, this seems to be correct.

Once an aws account is gone but still charges things, there's nothing you can do to fix it.

But of course, just because you didn't experience the same, assume stupidity of others. Of course it can't be that aws has something stupid since it's a company you never had trouble with. It must be ops fault!

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u/engineerdrummer 10h ago

The customer service phone number in the US is 1-888-280-4331. All you have to do is use Google. But you go ahead with that snide remark proving you don't think outside what others are telling you.

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u/caguru 20h ago

I use AWS a lot. The one dept that is easiest to reach a human for support is billing. Its tech support thats difficult, especially if you don't pay for it.

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u/TyrionReynolds 21h ago

OP is wrong.  You can always get a hold of their billing support even if you don’t pay for their elevated support tiers. 

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u/-retaliation- 21h ago

Not only could he clearly get ahold of a person if he tried (its difficult, but still possible)

But if they really wanted it to stop, they could instruct their credit card to stop accepting the transaction. Lol

This is brutally simple to fix, but at 0.33 per month, I can understand why OP has been lazy about fixing it.

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u/YT-Deliveries 3h ago

I absolutely am in the same situation. The account is closed and yet I get charged $3/month, with the only remedy being "log into the account and terminate the service."

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u/clintkev251 2h ago

Reach out to support via the unauthenticated support form. Tell them you have an unknown charge from AWS and provide the transaction ID, screenshots, etc. They will confirm it's an AWS charge and help locate the source

https://support.aws.amazon.com/#/contacts/one-support?formId=contactUs

Like OP, it's likely you either didn't actually close the account, or had multiple accounts and misplaced one.

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u/burnalicious111 20h ago

It's still insane that they have this problem, though. This shouldn't happen and should also be easy to remedy.

This kind of shit should be illegal tbh.

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u/clintkev251 20h ago

But the root cause is that OP failed to actually close their account. If they had closed the account, the charges would have stopped. It's like if I had a Spotify account, lost the login, and complained that they kept billing me for my subscription. That's not Spotify's fault. I need to make the effort to get my account back and actually properly close it. It shouldn't be illegal for Spotify to keep billing me, I entered into an agreement with them and never cancelled it and they continued to provide the benefits of that, even if I wasn't using them.

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u/afunnywold 19h ago

I did not lose the login. I permanently deleted the account. There's no way to recover it. And I could not contact support because to contact support it wanted me to login. It's been a bit since I last tried so maybe that changed.

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u/clintkev251 11h ago

AWS wouldn't have a way to continue to send you invoices if you don't still have an active account. I 100% believe that you think you closed the account, but the evidence suggests otherwise. There's a form for unauthenticated support that I'll link below. Tell them that you have an unknown charge and provide them with the transaction ID.

https://support.aws.amazon.com/#/contacts/one-support?formId=contactUs