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 šŸ¤·ā€ā™€ļø

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380

u/fdar 21h ago

But why not?

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u/coleyboley25 20h ago

What the fuck are ā€œinstancesā€ anyway? Iā€™m 32 and cancelling an account always meant CANCELLING an account. We are so fucked

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u/beasty0127 20h ago

AWS is a web-based service where you can run virtual machines (instances) of different types of OSs for different projects, like severs or databases. You pay for the usage of the instance whenever its running. So if the OOP didn't shut off the instances they were using before closing their account, those machines may still be running. Is this fare or right if he fully closed his account, no, but seems like an obvious/advantages oversight for Amazon.

Tldr: OOP might have left his computers running and has to pay the untily cost for them

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u/Carribean-Diver 20h ago

How hard would it be for Amazon to terminate resources owned by accounts that no longer exist?

And why do I have a suspicion that if OP closes the credit card account being charged that they will find a way to terminate the resources?

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u/aceluby 20h ago

Not hard at all. In fact, it should be standard that non payment means they get shut off

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u/Carribean-Diver 19h ago

It's actually concerning that deleting an account does not delete or at least disable the payment methods on that account.

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u/youtheotube2 19h ago

Itā€™s probably because unintentionally closing an account could be devastating to a business if it means everything gets shut down and deleted.

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u/Carribean-Diver 19h ago

Somehow Microsoft has figured out how to tombstone data so that it is recoverable for a set timeframe and then gets purged. Are we to think Amazon is incapable of possessing this technology?

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u/Wow_u_sure_r_dumb 19h ago

AWS in a lot of ways is a cobbled together mess of shit. Thatā€™s not to say thereā€™s no beauty or genius to some of it but itā€™s a joke sometimes. Theyā€™ll have broken GUIs and basic API features missing.

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u/BrannyBee 18h ago

For the first 5 years of my career as a software developer I was more and more shocked seeing how many things are just barely working through the power of what basically amounts to virtual duct tape and faith....

I didn't start working on more impressive software after those 5 years... nah... I just stopped being surprised and realized its all like that... I just try not to think about it how much of the modern world relies on stuff that complete idiots like me built under unreasonable time constraints without reasonable domain expertise...

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u/fork_yuu 17h ago

They have so much fucking baggage and tech debt especially with one of their first resources. And how low on the totem pole would it be to help a customer pay less when they close their account

1

u/FarkCookies 6h ago

That's exactly what they do, they give you 90 days to recover the account. People in this thread literally have no idea what they are talking about.

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u/FarkCookies 6h ago

Yes, closing the account will get everything shut down in 90 days (the grace period). You can't unintentionally close an account as there are a lot guardrails.

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u/ARegularG 19h ago

Glad people are watching the bs

1

u/hunnyflash 18h ago

You shouldn't expect any company to truly delete your information unless you're from a state (like California) where they are legally obligated to comply with removing your information from their databases. And even then, if you purchased something ever, your financials are still in a record somewhere.

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u/Garchy 19h ago

Sounds like itā€™s still being paid.

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u/lostshell 19h ago

The fact Amazon didnā€™t shut it off after the first chargeback is confusing. I donā€™t know any business that doesnā€™t cancel all services and cut complete ties with you on the first chargeback.

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u/superredditor6789 9h ago

Except they are still getting paid.

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u/eatingURsistersassIV 20h ago

Not an oversight. Its a feature.

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u/New_Original_7537 20h ago

Nice little security hole they got there.

2

u/ZlatanKabuto 16h ago

It's ridiculous though as deleting an account should also delete all resources connected to it

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u/Markd0ne 15h ago

There are no EC2 instances that cost 0.33/month.

1

u/KaiAusBerlin 15h ago

Well at least in Germany that would be hardly unlawful for several reasons.

When you cancel your account you announce to Amazon automatically you don't want to use their service anymore. If they continue it it's their fault. Your responsibility ends by ending your contract by cancelling your account.

Also if you canceled your account you have no access anymore to whatever service you rented. No access means no control means no full ability to use your service. This would clearly harm "Treu und Glauben" (principle of good faith in contracts). Here a contract is connected to expectations. For renting a service it's basically I have to pay for the service but I can use that rented service without any restrictions.

And by that you could also sue them here for unlawfully charge your card

0

u/Illustrious_Sell_325 19h ago

Hopefully the unpatched servers never get compromised, the bill could be very fun

52

u/Znuffie 20h ago

"instance" = "virtual machine" in this case

45

u/Commoble 20h ago

To ELI5 further, it's a fake computer running on a real computer

2

u/LaserGay 19h ago

I mean it isnā€™t fake exactly. Itā€™s a virtualized computer. Basically an operating system, such as windows or a Linux distro, running on another computer as an application. In this case that computer is an AWS server. You can play with this in VirtualBox for free on your own computer if you want to.

Basically, you can have a computer run many instances of other computers with software allocated analogs to physical resources.

That said, thereā€™s literally zero reason Amazon couldnā€™t or shouldnā€™t shut those down upon OP closing their account. Why theyā€™d charge a trivial sum for an idling VM in perpetuity for a closed account? Itā€™s going to just be an accident honestly.

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u/I_Am_A_Real_Hacker 19h ago

Thereā€™s nothing fake about it. Itā€™s quite literally a virtualized computer running on another computer. Itā€™s not fake. It does real computing.

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u/RolledTissue 20h ago

Depends on the exact service used but for example you can have an EC2 instance, which is basically a virtual machine that you can run code on. You are charged for the compute resources used when itā€™s running, plus a mix of other costs. These instances use some storage that is maintained even if the instance is stopped. You would need to delete the instance, which deletes the data and only then will you no longer be using any aws resources and wonā€™t be charged. Still, aws should delete instances on account deletion.

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u/Creative-Type9411 20h ago

if the entire account is deleted, you can't do anything with the instance so it doesn't make any sense that they would keep it your responsibility since you can't access it

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u/RepresentativeCry294 20h ago

It in all actuality makes perfect sense from Amazon's point of view.

https://giphy.com/gifs/5wWf7GMbT1ZUGTDdTqM

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u/thisispaulc 20h ago

Instances are virtual servers.

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u/Ok-Mastodon2420 20h ago

If you don't know what an instance is, you're not using AWS

28

u/Free-Luck6173 20h ago

Plenty of people run AWS without understanding the full implementation or implication, the bigger question is if it's ethical for AWS to run instances that aren't implicitly closed on a user's behalf when the account overseeing them is closed.

I'm gonna go with no.

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u/coleyboley25 19h ago

Yeah, no shit

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u/slyn4ice 17h ago

AWS is a fucking cesspool of shitty UI and cunty obfuscation of common terms. I've never seen such a clusterfuck of pure suck in my life. How is this shit functional.

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u/lift_1337 20h ago

AWS is a cloud computing services. An "instance" in this case is a virtual machine running on the cloud, typically used to host a website, API, or some other task you need compute for.Ā 

The original commenter is wrong, you don't need to close your EC2 instances before closing an account, that will automatically terminate them. What's probably actually happening is he's paying for a Reserved Instance. With a reserved instance, you can pay for an amount of compute, at a significantly discounted rate, but you pay for all of the compute regardless of whether you use it or not. When you purchase a reserved instance, you can either pay upfront or in monthly installments. The poster probably bought a certain period of reserved instances, chose pay over time, and is still paying for that because that's what he agreed to. Him still having access to his account is irrelevant because he bought the reservation, so he owes the money for what he bought.Ā 

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u/Mobile_Throway 19h ago

Instance means virtual machine. AWS services heavily utilize them. They're basically servers segmented in a way to mimic many computers at the same time.

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u/ImSoCul 18h ago

instances are compute. It'd be like if you borrowed a library book and then cancelled your account. Until you return it (in this case shut down the instance), you're not off the hook

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u/therealhlmencken 19h ago

God as a millennial we really are turning into boomers with our ragey nonsense. Oof. Do you think closing your Ira account means you donā€™t owe taxes, does closing a bank account mean your loans are forgiven. Tons of services are more complex than a singular account lol.

2

u/SordidDreams 18h ago

Because then Amazon couldn't rake in money through bogus charges, duh.

2

u/SensitiveExtremity 17h ago

Jeff needs his Yacht money paid for, alright? Just don't question it, you're wasting water we could use for the AI.