I had small Amazon EC2 instance running for almost 3 years. I stopped it 3 months ago and currently have some data on Amazon S3 I had no time to delete.
Couple of days ago I received email from Amazon that they could not bill my credit card in order to collect 10 cents for the S3 data. I logged into my account to see what going on and for the first time in my life I saw this message:
"You have 7 charges past due. Please pay the amount in full to avoid suspension or termination of your AWS Account."
"Select past charges and pay now"
So I clicked that and to my surprise I saw this:
"Please pay the amount in full to avoid suspension or termination of your AWS account"
Billing Period, Bill Details, You owe
June 1, 2009 - June 30, 2009, Bill Details, $ 92.14
April 1, 2009 - April 30, 2009, Bill Details, $ 90.12
January 1, 2009 - January 31, 2009, Bill Details, $ 91.57
November 1, 2008 - November 30, 2008, Bill Details, $ 87.24
August 1, 2008 - August 31, 2008, Bill Details, $ 93.78
April 1, 2008 - April 30, 2008, Bill Details, $ 88.49
February 1, 2008 - February 29, 2008, Bill Details, $ 83.92
Total Amount You Owe $627.26
Amount You Selected to Pay $627.26
They did not billed me for February 2008 ?!? 2008! And the total I owe them is $627.
I ofter receive messages from Amazon that they could not bill my credit card. This is because I don't use credit card but debit card for online payments. Every time I need to make a payment I go to the bank (which is nearby) and put some money into my account. I do this because:
1) Bank is nearby and this way I don't have to worry about stolen card details, etc
2) I have to think twice before buying something big online: first - when I put the money on my account, and second - when I make the real payment
I just spent an hour filtering the online billing records on my card for the past three years and it seems according to the records that Amazon is right - they did not billed me, according to my card records. I have difficult time figuring out how this could happened, since AWS billing is a monthly routine for me. Every month when I receive their warning email I go to the bank put enough money into my account and then stopped receiving warning emails from them.
HN moment: I have read somewhere on HN, or on HN linked story long time ago that you can have one month past due before they cut you off. And I am sure it was from some CEO of famous startup company, who was explaining how you can play with startup finances by delaying your payments to Amazon with a month (or this is how I understand it at the time).
I will talk to my bank on Monday to see if they can provide my with paper billing details regrading Amazon and will probably pay, but I think it is not good business practice to bill your clients 30 months later.
Have you ever been more than a month late on AWS billing. What happened?
What will your advice be in this situation?
Sorry, that really sucks. Then again, complicating systems invites error. Are you just trying to get your data off and leave Amazon hanging? Is the data worth the $600?
Either way, consider this a very expensive lesson in keeping proper backups.