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.
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 š¤·āāļø
Edit 2: called card and they said they will put in a dispute for any charges from the past 4 months and request for stop of all future charges š
For ppl who told me to get a new card, I had in the past, Visa shares the new number with companies that have recurring charges.
For ppl saying AWS isn't doing it on purpose because it would only make them a few millions a year which is a waste of time for them:
lots of others commented here that the same exact thing was happening to them and at higher charges so it could be tens of millions that they're actually stealing
even if that's still pocket change to them it's not to the consumer. It's still lazy and bad practice not to shut down all instances and payments on a permanently deleted account. it doesn't matter if their goal isn't greed, the end result still screws the consumer and that's what's messed up.
Another thing: some of y'all are acting like I'm an idiot for not knowing that the card could stop future charges and not heavily pursuing it earlier. It's fucking 33 cents, not enough to really effect me but enough to mildly annoy me. I DID try to reach out to Amazon and do chargebacks in the past, but it was a pain, nothing was coming of it, so at some point I was like fuck it whatever I'm not stressing myself out over 33 cents. When I remembered about it again last week I was annoyed again so I posted. Glad I got some helpful advice. But I'm definitely not the only one they were taking money from unfairly and since they mostly work with businesses it's likely they are illegally taking a lot more than just a few pennies from ppl. That's part of what's infuriating! Anyway ranting a lot because no one is really seeing this post anymore so I'm now free
Happened to me. Did a freelance job and set up the initial $1,000 credits and the contract ended and my access handed over. Nearly a year later it started charging me the $200ish a month for 8 months, always successfully charged back. Then I just asked them to change the card number. No idea what ever came of it for the other party. But nothing for myself.
Learned to use a generated card number for these instances going forward. Way less hassle.
I did a card number change to stop a recurring Spotify charge that was hitting my card that I had no ability to stop -- I had no account with them, and my family all assured me that my card was not on their accounts.
It did not stop the charge, Spotify had some sort of method of having card numbers be automatically updated.
(I finally called Spotify and made a big deal out of it, and they finally bothered to track it down from my CC number and it was a family member after all -- as I always suspected, but could never prove.)
I wanted a new card number because of a divorce. It was with a top 5 national bank. I know about the auto updating and didnāt want it to happed. I called the bank one person told me the auto updating program doesnāt exist even when I asked specially about the program by name. Another keep talking about digital wallets and couldnāt understand no I meant the merchant auto update. Another told me they could only block merchants if I gave the specific merchant name. Another told me I needed to call visa even thought itās a bank issued card. It took many calls to get someone who even knew what I was talking about.
In my professional career, I work with a lot of banks and bank tellers. Honestly it's dramatically reduced my faith in humanity. Asking an employee of a bank about anything banking related is about as useful as asking a police officer about anything law related. They don't actually know, they're just gonna make some shit up that's immediately convenient to them.
I've literally had to explain to bank managers what federal liability limits are. I had to explain to the employees at another bank that pennies stopped production months ago. I had to show one teller that the $100 bill she was handling clearly said "MOTION PICTURE USE ONLY" and literally lacked every security feature. And that's just the tip of the fuckin' iceberg.
Honestly, at least in the US, bank employees are just as incompetent and entitled as the police.
Started at $11/hr and nothing gets trained. Worked there for 2years. Tellers were treated as the lowest of the low, the last to know of any new regulations etc. but were punished the hardest for any mistakes.
Damn, that sucks. The industry I work in - I promise, you've dealt with us weekly over the last two years - isn't that much better. We assume a lot of risk, but we tend to get paid a bit better than average. Might get yelled at for a mistake, but it rarely will cost you your job. Might be worthwhile to look into jobs in cash management services, there's a few major companies doing it and the jobs in that department are essentially just tellers that don't have to talk to the public.
The bank still knows what account that number belonged to and can "force post" the transaction to the new number because the account is still the same even though the card number has changed.
It did not stop the charge, Spotify had some sort of method of having card numbers be automatically updated.
Hey friend, I used to work for Paramount+, and this happened with our billing system as well. If your bank is 'nice', and they see recurring charges on your card, they'll send that billing information to the biller any time you update the card.
The reason they do this, is because they don't want to have you updating 30 different subscriptions, and it's a 'nice' thing for them to do. You can, and should, ask that they never update any billers with your new credit card numbers. I do not know if this actually works, but it is what I'd tell customers anytime I see the card updated automatically in our system.
It happens way, way more than you'd think, and so, so many people are caught out by the 'The card is cancelled, so no more payments should get through' mindset.
this happened to me recently with Hulu. tried multiple times to cancel my account. canceled my cc twice. then i found out that certain merchants are actually given a completely different code that bypasses if you get a new card. it wouldnāt matter bc they have access to the account via their merchant code with the bank. itās extremely scammy. do not understand how this even became legal and curious where in the T&S it states they can do this. took me reporting fraud two separate times and now i canāt use that credit card account at all anymore for some reason they locked me out of it. šš
Spotify did admit that their was a mechanism to auto-update cards and it had been used. I suspect that my credit card company didn't flag the old card as stolen or whatever is required to prevent that mechanism?
I was a bit surprised by that -- after all, it was my credit card company that presented the new card as a way to stop the charge, so why didn't they set it up right for that? Probably just a mistake on their part.
Iāve had this as well. I had my identity stolen 2ish years ago so I replaced my debit and credit cards with new numbers issued. I figured it would be a good opportunity to only resubscribe to services I actually want to use. I was surprised when several services were able to auto bill my account and new cards without manually updating my payment info.
The bank isn't sharing anything. The card issuers have a service called Card Account Updater that merchants can subscribe to, so when your card gets replaced or expires, your payments aren't interrupted.
Changing a card number is not meant to be a security measure for subscriptions, nor does it come with any obligation to businesses you have given your card number to. You have to actually report your account information as stolen - not just replace it. You can also ask your bank to stop the payments - most banks can do this, or can at least tell the processor to stop the payments.
Edit: To explain a little further - in a lot of cases, the businesses charging your subscription billing never even got your card number in the first place - or didn't keep it after setting up your account. The card number went to a processor's gateway (like Stripe, NMI, Paypal etc), who returned a identifier back to the business (we usually call it a "vault ID" or a "network account ID"). The business then says "charge this ID this much money" and the processor takes care of everything else.
The business actually rarely even knows your card changed at all, other than in cases where they display the first 6 or last 4 of your card number - but that's just for informational purposes anyways.
If something hasbeen flagged as as recurring charge on you credit card, the credit card company essentially forwards the charge to the new card. I forget what it's called but you have to call to disable and hops you're talking to a representative that knows about it
Card issuers and their reps seem to vary in how they deal with it. Some understand that they need to turn off the account updater service first, when issuing a new card, if the unwanted or fraudulent charge is a recurring type. Some have to be told to do that. And some, when they're told, go "Huh? What's account updater?"
Not necessarily some big businesses have it set up where if you get a card change it automatically updates your new card information which the bank gives them.
Or sometieme they have basically a token from the Bank after you give them the card information. So instead of it hitting via your debit card it's hitting via your bank and routing number.
Instances needs to be turned off and deleted. OP probably didn't know that before closing the account. Closing the account doesn't cancel the instances
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
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?
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 itās 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 wonāt be charged. Still, aws should delete instances on account deletion.
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
From the same FAQ further down: AWS Marketplace subscriptions aren't automatically canceled on account closure. If you have any subscriptions, first terminate all instances of your software in the subscriptions. Then, go to the Manage subscriptions page of the AWS Marketplace console and cancel your subscriptions.
Edit: Dear dummies, my name is neither Jeff nor Bezos. Go vent your frustrations about the AWS rules elsewhere.
Okay but if you don't they don't just get a free pass to charge you monthly forever, they need to have a way to cancel these even after your account was deleted if they're gonna do it this way.
Edit: damn, guy came at me with heat and then just deleted his comment. Bro you're the one over here defending this bullshit, expect people to call it as it is and direct it at you.
Suprised I had to go down in the comments this far to see this comment. I back this comment: from experience at my company, ALWAYS delete all ressources before deleting the account. Yes, it is dumb, yes, they should delete everything themselves after deletion, but hey, thats how it works...
Guess what, contradictory information that has to be read over with a fine-tooth comb is still a scam. Anyone who has received even the most basic anti-scam or AML training knows this.
"You don't need to delete resources in your AWS account before closing it. However, we recommend you back up any resources or data that you want to keep. For instructions about how to back up a particular resource, see the appropriate AWS documentation for that service."
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.
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.
I find it hard to believe you have had any conversation with your card company about this, because they would have handled it for you day of. Any bank or credit card company will end ongoing payments on your behalf at request.
This will not always fix the issue. You may have to communicate with a human at your bank. Banks can update merchants with correct card information for recurring transactions, and they can also issue you a new card without updating merchants. You (obviously) want the latter, and if there isn't an option when doing it online, you may have to go into a local branch to handle it.
My credit union thankfully does not. I had a gym try to lock me in, so I told them "I'm able to remove my membership as pernthe contract. However if you won't let me, I have two options." I let my credit union know why, and they got me a new card entirely. Never heard from that gym again.
Had multiple emails from antivirus software company telling me my card details needed to be updated, or they'd be unable to take payment and my subscription would be cancelled. I wanted to cancel it anyway, so concluded there was no problem. It renewed anyway and charged my updated card.Ā
When I contacted support to ask to cancel, they refused, saying I'd had plenty of warning about the renewal and should have cancelled it beforehand.
What I like to do is that I like to set my subscriptions to only draw money from my secondary bank account on like a prepaid debit card or an online bank like Chime.
This second bank account, dedicated to subscriptions, is basically like a prepaid debit card. You have to load the card first before paying.
These cards will not allow a transaction to go through at all unless the money is actually in there.
I then just set a monthly transfer to cover the exact amounts, and my secondary card pays by proxy.
This way there is no way to authorize more than the subscription amount, and only on the day the subscription is due.
And my subscriptions become easily cancellable. I can just delete the recurring transfer (I'll stop reloading the card) and I won't have to worry about that subscription ever again
Unfortunately I don't think that will always work. Some subscriptions will try again later if they fail. This means that if the try again ends up on the same day as another payment it could end up taken instead, now you have paid the wrong one and are out of sync
Every bank gives you the option to stop all incoming transactions from a specific source too. Sounds like OP didn't try very hard to stop these payments lol
When I worked disputes for a credit card, this is not something we were able to do! It was incredibly frustrating, especially since renumbering the card wouldn't fix the issue either. A chargeback would usually do the trick, but not necessarily.
At least in Australia I've changed banks to get round this. The card no longer exists, the account no longer exists, the bank no longer has access to my money. Bill me now you fuckers.
Did that back in the 90s here in the US. Bank refused to stop paying a charge after multiple managers had supposedly put a block on it.
Finally closed the account and changed banks. I moved soon after, and of course didn't think to give an updated address to a closed account.
They re-opened the closed account to continue to pay the charge. Which caused it to overdraft since it was empty (it had been closed). The they started looking on overdraft fees and daily negative balance fees. Of course I didn't get the notice because I'd moved.
Found out when my current bank closed my new account suddenly because the overdrafted account had been charged off for $900 negative and reported to Chex Systems. Remember I had CLOSED that account.
Banks are vicious. I ended up without a bank account for seven years because of it.
I donāt how it is in the land down under but in the states, credit cards are independent of where you bank. They send you a bill and if you donāt pay, it gets reported to the credit bureau as delinquent and affects your credit rating.
I've only ever had a credit card as part of a package from a specific bank. You want a mortgage? You get a credit card with it (and about six other things). Moving the mortgage to another bank was necessary but I did close the card, the account and all the rest.
Yep, inevitably I got the same random reminder emails from organisations that tried to bill me, and put new card details in when I felt it necessary. But obviously with the "you closed your account but we keep billing you" ones I couldn't do that. I never got contacted by debt collectors and credit ratings in Australia are much less influential than the social credit systems used in some countries. I don't know that anything I did affected my social credit score, no-one has ever mentioned it.
I had one from a gym. My bank could not cancel it even after I cancelled the gym membership. The manager said my cancelation was ok as it was an actual issue that happened. The franchise owner said no. Got charged went to dispute bank said their hands were tied. I closed my bank account to stop it.
Their support is almost nonexistent and impossible to contact so there's no way to beg a human to stop stealing from us every damn month until we die.Ā
Literally. Just call your credit card company and block transactions from them. Itās not hard. I was getting charged by paramount and espn for a few months on an old card and couldnāt find my account anywhere. No clue what it was so called discover and they blocked all future charges
I'm not scared to call. Just pain in the ass and mildly infuriating that I have to at all. (Why are they charging anything to an account that is disabled!)
I did just call after all the comments yelling at me here lmao
I did that recently and was shocked at all the āoh noes we stopped stealing please let us keep doing itā emails Iāve been getting. Good riddance to most of them.
Weird how whenever I get a new card, all of my goddamn utilities are like āyour payment has not been received, please update your accountā. But when itās something you actually donāt want to pay, they somehow manage to automatically update it without permission.
I think it has something to do with the subscription terms of service vs the rules and regulations around automatic payments. Itās very unfair, and as convenient as it may seem, Iām glad utilities canāt use account info to grab from card numbers they donāt know yet.
That can happen if you get a new card number for the same account. Closing the account (and potentially opening another one) should not transfer. You donāt even have to open the new one at the same institution.
Yep I got a new Chase card and my friend who uses my old card on their DoorDash account was still able to charge it and have it show up on my new card lol
Mastercard does this as well. Got dinged by Adobeās bs. Thought I was being smart and used an expiring card so they wouldnāt be able to charge me again AND I wouldnāt have to go through their cancellation process but nope
I had a relative that had a recurring charge that she couldn't stop no matter what she did. So she got a new card. They kept charging her on the new card even though they never gave them the info for the new card.
It costs Amazon money (like on top of the refund) every time you do a charge back, if that makes you feel better! I think it's like $15 usually although wouldn't be shocked if Amazon had a deal with the credit card companies and have a cheaper fee.
Also, since it's such a small amount, its possible your credit card is just writing off the money and refunding you, rather than doing a chargeback. I would hope that once you explained the situation, they'd do a chargeback in order to try to get Amazon to stop the recurring charges, but š¤·š»āāļø so next time you call, I would recommend stressing that you want it to be charged back and not written off.
Sadly, even if you remember your card, most credit cards will let recurring charges continue onto the new card as a "courtesy" š
Also be aware that if you do an actual chargeback, it's possible Amazon may disable any other accounts tied to your identity. I'm guessing you don't care, but figured I'd mention the risk.
If they charge 33 cents to one million customers each month:
That's over a quarter of a million dollars a month.
That's over a million dollars every four months.
That's almost 4 million dollars a year.
I'm not an attorney, but I imagine that even if they're doing this to a fraction of that number, they're earning a ridiculous amount of money off the back of what is likely an illegal practice in many states and countries.
There arenāt a million customers that open and utilize AWS and also donāt know how to stop the services and then cancelling their accountā¦. This is some edge case that service reps probably arenāt trained on and donāt know the proper procedure.
They make hand over fist amounts on AWS, they donāt need/want this pittance that could disrupt that with unnecessary litigation and negative PRā¦
IMO Amazon customer service is one of the best among giant retail corporationsā¦
There are a lot of ways AWS is designed to try and make money off of people who arenāt paying attention. Having automated backups that restore for basically everything even if you explicitly delete them is a common thing people end up paying for. They also charge your bank account using the same text as a normal Amazon purchase so if someone else (a spouse for example) also uses your Amazon, it can be easy to miss that youāre getting AWS charges.
Amazon also is so big they donāt care about PR anymore. AWS is basically industry standard for web hosting stuff, they donāt really need to care about bad PR because itās still a better product across the board for reliability in web stuff. Anyone who has used AWS consistently can tell you the UI is extremely basic for a large company, can be hard to navigate, and also that a lot of it is designed in a way that makes changing to another web service provider is more difficult than is worth the trouble.
I do have no doubt you can just talk to customer service if you really want to. But that doesnāt mean they arenāt intentionally trying to keep as many customers with small charges as possible. Chargebacks are ill advised if you use that card/email for your normal Amazon account which can be common for personal projects.
that's payroll for 20-30 SWEs every year. literally multiple teams' worth of of resources that they can bankroll from this. not insignificant at all regardless of their size
Perhaps try calling AWS technical support? I used to work MS O365 on the back end and received a ticket similar to yours. What I found was an orphaned storage container with a few megabytes in it.
No account is permanently deleted. It might be inaccessible to you, but they still have that account with all that information still, and leftover files. Hence the problem you are having.Ā
Get a new card number issued and cancel the current one. When they can't charge against it they'll either just fuck off or end up exposing the elusive rep who you can yell at and actually effect action. Either way, problem solved.
Issuing a new card often doesn't stop charges that are already accepted. To ease regular card changes, banks added the ability to basically auto migrate to new cards (simplifying what actually happens) when theyre issues.
Apple was charging me $0.99 for some iPhone service. A family member used my card, passed away, and Apple wouldnāt cancel it even though it was my card. I called my bank and they put a stop to the charge no question asked. The recurring charge stopped.
Was just gonna say each chargeback is gonna cost Amazon 10x if not 100x of what they're charging OP.
I'd do monthly chargebacks just to fuck with them. Guaranteed at some point either the bean counters will notice, or the bank will flag Amazon's merchant account and then the bean counters will REALLY take notice.
That's often not enough - some merchants can and do change a cancelled card, that takes your money. The charge must be based on a contract you agreed to when the card was active.
I had a similar deal with homeaglow. I reported it as fraud to my card company and reported them to my state's AG's office. Got all my bs payments back and all future payments canceled.
This is actually a good idea, state AGs actually do follow up with companies on this stuff (especially if they get enough complaints about it) and it really gets the company's attention. All it takes is a few emails or registered letters from an AG to a company and bam, stuff happens.
I dead ass had to get on the line with customer support and threaten to "blow my shit smoove off" so they would perma ban my account. Amazon is predatory as fuck and will just add random charges to your account because they weren't making enough money off of you. Also fuck Jeff bezos
I'm dealing with this exact issue and my credit card always sides with AWS when they send a big invoice claiming they provided the services billed. Despite the fact that I have an email from AWS refusing to close the account and suggesting I simply dispute the charges.
(I can't delete the account myself because it belongs to corporate credentials I don't have access to)
Similar things happened to me at fifth third bank when they changed their totally free checking account to have a higher balance to be free.
I put $800 into it for emergencies and they upped the limit from $500 to like $1,500 and never notified me about it. When I checked the account 2 years later, they were taking out $35 a month for not having sufficient funds in the account.
I go out of my way now to open an account there when they offer money for new account holders just to close it after i get it.
I had some fraud charges from shopify. I have never used them. Called them to let them know about 6 fraudulent charges. They said they could only help with 4 because of their policy only covering charges going back a certain time. Luckily my card company got rid of them, but these corporations suck these days
I had to make an aws account for a class I took once. I made sure to not exceed the free limits and shut down everything after I completed the project. Ive gotten over 1k emails telling me I owe $0.63. They've spent well above that just in energy costs to send me all those emails.
I don't understand how this isn't literally fraud. They're sending you a bill for services that don't exist.
If you have a net worth of $100,000, a bill for $0.33 is about the same percentage of your wealth as a bill for $1,000,000 is to Jeff Bezos. If I did that to him, I'd be getting fucked in the ass in federal prison. So why does he get away with it?
That happened to me too! And nobody at AWS could help. I challenged the charge each month through my credit card and eventually I got a nasty gram from AWS saying something to the effect of being banned forever. But it did stop the charges.
Blast it on social media and tell others to check to see if it is being done to them, odds are you are not the only person this is happening to. Maybe it will catch like wild fire like things do. Hell even send it it to some big time people who like to expose things like this. I bet they would love to look into this and the policies that they use to make something so simple seem like the worlds hardest thing so people just give up.
OPā¦ your bank can stop ALL transactions coming from a source. It literally is a phone call to your bank and 10-15 minutes of your time and itās done. Iām speaking from personal experience of a similar nature only it spanning only four months.Ā
Years ago they were double charging us for Prime. Numerous customer service reps said they couldn't see where or how we were being charged, then they said they couldn't tell me who opened the account but that yes it was under my email, then they couldn't tell me which card it was charging and then that they couldn't cancel it because I wasn't the account holder. Ultimately put a stop payment as that was the only option. Amazon has absolutely garbage CS policies when it comes to canceling anything (as does Nintendo)!
In my country, I can see all my credit card subscriptions in a single portal and cancel them whenever I want without logging into the seller website. Saved me a lot of money
Id repeat what others have about a charge back or blocking through your bank, but reading OP's replies they are just a whiny ass bitch too lazy to put in the small effort of fixing it
I've had this happen to me as well. Permanently closed my account and all services, yet I still got charged two more months even though the account had been closed for weeks already. I begged them to stop and refund me. They did stop, never received the refund the said I'd be receiving.
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u/Ok_Builder_4225 Aug 02 '26
Makes me wonder how many others they do that to.