February 22, 2026
Cloud or cult? You decide
AWS won't discuss my bill, suspended my account, took $1,600, still no human
AWS horror story or user fail? Internet can’t agree on $18k ‘ghost bill’
TLDR: A man says AWS auto-charged him $18,000 for hardly any usage, then locked his business out while refusing to connect him with a real person. The comments explode into a brawl over whether AWS is holding customers hostage or the user ignored giant red flags and basic bill checking.
An Amazon Web Services (AWS) customer says the cloud giant quietly drained $18,000 for “near-zero” usage, then locked his business out when he stopped paying—and the internet immediately split into camps: **“AWS villain” vs. “Something’s missing here, bro.”
On one side, people are furious, calling it “hostage-taking” to yank his website, email, and domain over a disputed bill and then refuse to let him talk to a human. Commenters are swapping battle plans: chargebacks, small claims court, writing to state attorneys, even emailing Amazon execs directly with Jeff Bezos in copy like it’s the nuclear option. Others say the real lesson is simple: never park your domain, email, and billing with the same company unless you like living dangerously.
But the skeptical crowd is just as loud. They’re asking the awkward questions: How do you not notice $1,500 disappearing every month for a year? Why keep paying instead of turning things off or moving providers? One commenter bluntly asks if the user actually created the expensive resources they’re being billed for. The thread has turned into a mix of legal advice, money-shaming, anti-AWS rants, and dark humor about needing a lawyer just to cancel a bill. Underneath the jokes, there’s one big fear: if this can happen to him, how safe is anyone from a surprise “cloud tax”?
Key Points
- •The customer claims AWS billed them about $1,500 per month for over a year despite what they describe as near-zero usage, totaling more than $18,000.
- •Multiple attempts to get a human callback through AWS support allegedly resulted only in automated calls, with no human ever returning the call.
- •After the customer stopped paying, AWS suspended the account on February 19, which brought down Route 53 DNS and disabled their domain, business email, and website.
- •The customer paid an outstanding $1,600 bill on February 21, but the account remained locked as a new roughly $1,500 bill generated while they were already suspended and unable to view or pay it.
- •Account suspension reportedly removed the customer’s support tier and callback eligibility, and they say all support channels, including console access and new account creation, are blocked while their case (177075616300933) remains unresolved.