

Ask HN: Anyone been bitten by aws "free tier" charges? - nni

aws requires a credit card to sign up for the free tier (ugh).  It looks like you can still get charged for a variety of things unless you <i>really</i> watch out.  Hooking up a faucet to a credit card with the risk that who-knows-what charges might hit is worrisome. Relying on alerts after-the-fact does not solve this, imo.<p>But maybe I&#x27;m alone in feeling this way, and was wondering if anyone has really had a problem with this before.  thx
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nostrademons
Yeah, Amazon charged me for $0.41 that they're still trying to collect upon
because the credit card I used to sign up was canceled. I had a friend
complain about getting a bill for I think $0.01 that caused a bunch of
administrative hassles.

I think the risk of super-high bills is pretty minimal because if you're using
the free tier you're not doing stuff that will incur super-high charges
anyway. Still, I hate owing money and I hate the administrative hassle of
being billed for tiny (sub-$1) amounts a year after signing up.

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nni
yes that is small, and an interesting hassle I hadn't thought about. I would
think you could have the option to set a cap so that it stops using services
when you hit it, but they don't allow that. A labyrinthine pricing model,
coupled with the forced hookup to the credit card for the free tier (that
apparently they'll keep trying to charge against and come after you for if the
card is cancelled, or you try to self-cap by only having a certain amount on
the card), makes for a big distraction, afaic. It is a hypothetically
essentially infinite potential suck of your $$... that you will be at the
mercy of Amazon customer service to resolve. Now, this has not apparently
happened (or I assume we would have heard about it), but the mechanism is in
place. Maybe it's just usually a few hundred dollars - curious how often it
happens.

I must be about the only one to be concerned about it. Lots of folks obviously
seriously rely on the services aws provides, and do not lose sleep over the
possibilities here given the benefits they enjoy from it.

