"Here’s the part that actually gets to me as a Developer Advocate. When a student gets a surprise bill, they don’t usually think “I missed a step in my cleanup.” They think “AWS secretly charges you even after you delete stuff.” They tell their classmates and that becomes the narrative. I’ve heard it in person, on discord, etc. “Be careful with AWS, they’ll charge you for nothing.” It’s not cool because it can scare people away from learning skills that would genuinely help their careers."
Maybe it teaches some of them not to stick their hand in lawnmowers.
When I was a student, I had an account at Citizens Bank, which had a branch on-campus. I pretty much never used it: I put some money in at the beginning, occasionally added some; used the ATM from time to time.
At the end of four years, I decided to close my account. There was less money in there than I thought there should be. I demanded an accounting. They happily demonstrated that there was a disclosed-only-in-fine-print fee charged each month that I didn't use the account according to some arcane formula. They wouldn't refund the fee.
So for the thirty or forty years since, I've never used Citizens Bank for anything, even if it would have been convenient. And I discouraged other people from doing so. I imagine I've cost them several thousand times those fees in revenue over the years.
Anyway, this is a story about AWS and their no-good, horrible-by-design billing practices.
Microsoft charged me 2 cents per month for 4 months and I couldn't do anything about it because they have a delay on closing accounts. It felt like a scam gym membership, but for 8 cents.
Reminds me of a bank account I had in Australia back in 1999 (I think it was Commonwealth Bank). I'd opened it as I was there travelling for a year and it made EFTPOS (early payment by card) easier and cheaper than using my UK bank card.
At the end of the year of travel, I went into the branch to close the account and they said I couldn't close it because I couldn't withdraw the remaining $2.11 because it was lower than the minimum withdrawal amount (I think maybe $10) and that I should just leave it open.
About a year later, I got the latest 6 month statement that they'd posted internationally saying that my account was now $100 ish overdrawn, because they'd started charging me a monthly fee on the account, and somehow I was just expected to have known that. The previous statement hadn't mentioned it, they'd just started charging it because they'd introduced a fee for accounts with a low balance. It took about several long international phone calls (and back then they were about $0.40 per minute, at least one was probably an hour long) to convince them that I had no plans to return to Australia in the foreseeable future, or to pay them the account fee especially given that I had attempted to close the account previously and they refused, and finally they agreed to close the account and waive the fee. But I'd spent loads in charges on the international calls, and they'd posted me a statement twice printed on heavy non-airmail paper, all because they wouldn't just let me shut my account when I originally asked in branch to do it.
25 years later and I still haven't gone back to Australia, even though it was one of the best years of my life. I'm going blame the bank for that (even though it was really just not having the opportunity to go again!)
I am just as spiteful and stubborn about Motel 6. One night in 2010 they didn't tell me until after I checked in that there was no running water. The water never got fixed that night. They didn't refund me when I asked. I've spent 16 years not only not staying there but leaving bad reviews and telling the story whenever I can.
> AWS doesn’t charge you in mysterious ways. It charges you in specific, predictable ways that nobody taught you to look for. That’s a knowledge gap. The purpose of this post is to shed some light on this.
Or it's a UX gap. If this is such a common complaint that's causing meaningful reputation damage, surely there'd be a better way to communicate this in the product? I think it's fair to assume that there's less interest in building features that encourage users to spend less money.
Agreed. AWS is downright hostile about giving you any idea about what resources you actually have deployed, to the point where it must be deliberately malicious. Even their billing page is terrible for tracing down the root cause of usage with the default configuration.
You have to go into third party tooling if you want any chance of seeing what’s actually going on, especially if there’s any odds of you deploying stuff in another region and even moreso if you have more than 1 account.
At this point, I’d say it should be a best practice of owning 2 AWS accounts, even as a hobbyist: one payer account with a HEAVILY locked down SCP and then a child account with the stuff you’re deploying.
It's the UX, deliberately omitting information or not. There at least used to be some toggles for example without any indication that they mean anything other than a minor load balancer configuration change, but caused I think $200 month bill addition. No indication at all that they have a meaningful monetary impact.
I recently dealt with something similar with a CDN I used for a project 3 years ago. They kept charging me $0.01/month after I got all of my content off of their servers. Took months to resolve, luckily was pennies so it wasn't a big deal but very frustrating.
Interesting that the author flags what is actually one of my pet peeves ...
> [Snapshots] get created automatically, often during deletion workflows, and nobody thinks to look for them.
creating random backups of things you are shutting down "just in case" that you must then remember to go back and delete. It's especially annoying if you stood up an EC2 instance or whatever, realized you messed up the configuration and immediately shut it down. Now you have a pile of poop running up your bill that you need to find and delete.
The way this guy writes makes me want to puke. "Whoa dude, the hidden setting in AWS got you charged and now you're warning your friends about it? That's uncool dude, you're discouraging them from learning! As a Developer Advocate, let me advocate the corporations interests to you, the developer."
"Here’s the part that actually gets to me as a Developer Advocate. When a student gets a surprise bill, they don’t usually think “I missed a step in my cleanup.” They think “AWS secretly charges you even after you delete stuff.” They tell their classmates and that becomes the narrative. I’ve heard it in person, on discord, etc. “Be careful with AWS, they’ll charge you for nothing.” It’s not cool because it can scare people away from learning skills that would genuinely help their careers."
Maybe it teaches some of them not to stick their hand in lawnmowers.
When I was a student, I had an account at Citizens Bank, which had a branch on-campus. I pretty much never used it: I put some money in at the beginning, occasionally added some; used the ATM from time to time.
At the end of four years, I decided to close my account. There was less money in there than I thought there should be. I demanded an accounting. They happily demonstrated that there was a disclosed-only-in-fine-print fee charged each month that I didn't use the account according to some arcane formula. They wouldn't refund the fee.
So for the thirty or forty years since, I've never used Citizens Bank for anything, even if it would have been convenient. And I discouraged other people from doing so. I imagine I've cost them several thousand times those fees in revenue over the years.
Anyway, this is a story about AWS and their no-good, horrible-by-design billing practices.
Microsoft charged me 2 cents per month for 4 months and I couldn't do anything about it because they have a delay on closing accounts. It felt like a scam gym membership, but for 8 cents.
Reminds me of a bank account I had in Australia back in 1999 (I think it was Commonwealth Bank). I'd opened it as I was there travelling for a year and it made EFTPOS (early payment by card) easier and cheaper than using my UK bank card.
At the end of the year of travel, I went into the branch to close the account and they said I couldn't close it because I couldn't withdraw the remaining $2.11 because it was lower than the minimum withdrawal amount (I think maybe $10) and that I should just leave it open.
About a year later, I got the latest 6 month statement that they'd posted internationally saying that my account was now $100 ish overdrawn, because they'd started charging me a monthly fee on the account, and somehow I was just expected to have known that. The previous statement hadn't mentioned it, they'd just started charging it because they'd introduced a fee for accounts with a low balance. It took about several long international phone calls (and back then they were about $0.40 per minute, at least one was probably an hour long) to convince them that I had no plans to return to Australia in the foreseeable future, or to pay them the account fee especially given that I had attempted to close the account previously and they refused, and finally they agreed to close the account and waive the fee. But I'd spent loads in charges on the international calls, and they'd posted me a statement twice printed on heavy non-airmail paper, all because they wouldn't just let me shut my account when I originally asked in branch to do it.
25 years later and I still haven't gone back to Australia, even though it was one of the best years of my life. I'm going blame the bank for that (even though it was really just not having the opportunity to go again!)
Deposit $10 then withdraw $12.11?
Sorry you had to go through that clusterf*.
I am just as spiteful and stubborn about Motel 6. One night in 2010 they didn't tell me until after I checked in that there was no running water. The water never got fixed that night. They didn't refund me when I asked. I've spent 16 years not only not staying there but leaving bad reviews and telling the story whenever I can.
> I used to feel this.
Old you was right. No student should ever enter personal payment information into AWS. You cannot afford the mistake.
They have chosen not to make a safe way to use it without financial risks.
We used to use this at work https://github.com/ekristen/aws-nuke
> AWS doesn’t charge you in mysterious ways. It charges you in specific, predictable ways that nobody taught you to look for. That’s a knowledge gap. The purpose of this post is to shed some light on this.
Or it's a UX gap. If this is such a common complaint that's causing meaningful reputation damage, surely there'd be a better way to communicate this in the product? I think it's fair to assume that there's less interest in building features that encourage users to spend less money.
The number one feature which would resolve this is. A list all resources page.
Agreed. AWS is downright hostile about giving you any idea about what resources you actually have deployed, to the point where it must be deliberately malicious. Even their billing page is terrible for tracing down the root cause of usage with the default configuration.
You have to go into third party tooling if you want any chance of seeing what’s actually going on, especially if there’s any odds of you deploying stuff in another region and even moreso if you have more than 1 account.
At this point, I’d say it should be a best practice of owning 2 AWS accounts, even as a hobbyist: one payer account with a HEAVILY locked down SCP and then a child account with the stuff you’re deploying.
It's the UX, deliberately omitting information or not. There at least used to be some toggles for example without any indication that they mean anything other than a minor load balancer configuration change, but caused I think $200 month bill addition. No indication at all that they have a meaningful monetary impact.
They send me an email every month stating I owe $0.28 or they 'll close the account. It's been 5 years now.
I recently dealt with something similar with a CDN I used for a project 3 years ago. They kept charging me $0.01/month after I got all of my content off of their servers. Took months to resolve, luckily was pennies so it wasn't a big deal but very frustrating.
Interesting that the author flags what is actually one of my pet peeves ...
> [Snapshots] get created automatically, often during deletion workflows, and nobody thinks to look for them.
creating random backups of things you are shutting down "just in case" that you must then remember to go back and delete. It's especially annoying if you stood up an EC2 instance or whatever, realized you messed up the configuration and immediately shut it down. Now you have a pile of poop running up your bill that you need to find and delete.
The way this guy writes makes me want to puke. "Whoa dude, the hidden setting in AWS got you charged and now you're warning your friends about it? That's uncool dude, you're discouraging them from learning! As a Developer Advocate, let me advocate the corporations interests to you, the developer."
No way this is being written seriously, is it?
this happened to me. they refunded me after i contacted support!
AWS sends me an invoice for $0.01 every month.
Me too! AWS actually charges my credit card $0.01 every month.
I'm surprised they don’t just waive low balances, like many banks do [0]
How is it economical for AWS to charge a credit card for a penny? I wonder what Amazon’s agreements with interchange networks must be like...
[0]: https://www.doctorofcredit.com/small-balance-waiver-a-k-a-lo...
They send me an invoice for $0.00 and I cannot seem to convince them to stop
> They send me an invoice for $0.00 and I cannot seem to convince them to stop
Same here! Am I being charged a fractional cent rounded down to 0? Who knows!?
Just pay it, freeloader.
tbh, I'd send them 5 cents and see what happens.
You'd be charged 200$ for manual accounting effort to figure out the mismatch