Ask HN: Any AWS billing issues known? Amazon forecast of 3 billion dollars
I received an AWS Budgets alert showing a forecasted charge of over 3 billion dollars despite not actively using AWS in the last year. The AWS support AI chat bot suggested this indicates a billing or metering error due to perfectly consistent daily costs since July 1. I have already disabled IAM roles and deleted known resources, but I am seeking advice as I have not yet received a response from human support.
- One commenter argues that AWS's billing code changes bypass rigorous approval processes, suggesting AI-driven automation is pushing untested implementations directly to production.
- A practitioner shares a personal experience where a dormant AWS account suddenly incurred massive charges that support could not resolve without an account number, forcing the user to cancel their credit card to stop the billing.
- Skeptics contend that generating a $2 trillion bill is technically impossible even if a single user maxed every billable capability, implying the figure is likely a display error or AI hallucination rather than real usage.
- Users draw parallels to the Robinhood incident where a software error falsely showed a user a massive debt leading to suicide, warning that such billing glitches can have severe real-world consequences beyond financial loss.