Ask HN: Any AWS billing issues known? Amazon forecast of 3 billion dollars

47•mstolpm•2h ago

I receive an AWS Budgets alert that my budget is exceeding the alert threshold. Threshold is 5$. Forecasted amount is listed as $3,005,575,870.47. (Yepp, right, that’s 3 billion dollars.) I haven't even used AWS actively in the last year, but AWS console lists the amount as stated above. No feedback from AWS support yet, but the support AI chat bot says: "Die perfekt gleichmäßigen Tageskosten seit dem 1. Juli deuten stark auf einen Abrechnungs- oder Messfehler hin." ("The perfectly consistent daily costs since July 1 strongly suggest a billing or metering error.") Bot created a support ticket (or at least told me so). Anyone else seeing something like this? Already disabled all AWS IAM roles and deleted all other AWS resources I know of. AWS login not hacked as far as I can tell. But owing Amazon 3 billion dollars is a bit of a concern. Any ideas?

Comments

jwik•1h ago

Yes, there is a known issue with cost estimation.

https://health.aws.amazon.com/health/status

mstolpm•1h ago

Thank you. Have seen this after I posted.

coffee_is_nom•28m ago

Thanks, I panicked logged in and could not find the root cause of the bill.

Thanks AWS, no caffeine needed this morning!

mysterydip•50m ago

Bit of an understatement: “The displayed billing estimates do not reflect actual usage and charges.”

AngryKitten•36m ago

Whatever you do, AWS, don't post a related service health alert site wide on the console. Heck, don't even post one in the billing module. We wouldn't want to overdo the alerts, especially when we already have one being displayed to market the new FinOps Agent in Public Preview.

throwaway_5753•1h ago

Scared me even though it was obviously a bug once I stopped to consider the magnitude ($bn). Very unfriendly that they don't allow for hard spend caps; closed my mostly dormant personal account as a result.

hoppyluke•1h ago

My estimate was only $21M (vs ~$0.01 average bill). Wish I had checked status sooner and saved myself the panic!

My process went: verify email is not phishing (it was), login to console and check dashboard (same amount), attempt to understand cost (cost management kept contradicting itself), try to log support ticket and only on that part did I notice the status notification. At least I can breathe again now!

zengineer•21m ago

same process, same near heart attack - especially some days ago I had malicious activity on my platform and thought that now they actually found something.

Apparently you can trigger an Action (e.g. prevent uploads) when the billing alert triggers, but then my platform wouldn't work anymore, just because AWS had an issue. Also insane that Amazon still hasn't send an email to clarify.

th3o6a1d•53m ago

131 billion for me

fron•51m ago

Woke up to a billing alarm email. Thought I had leaked my AWS keys accidentally and somehow run up 437 billion dollars of charges. Joke's on them though, I don't have 437 billion dollars

Anyways I didn't need coffee. That produced an adrenaline release unlike any I've experienced before. Thanks AWS

lijok•14m ago

If you owe AWS 437k bucks, that’s a big problem for you

If you owe AWS 437B bucks, that’s a big problem for AWS

gib444•46m ago

Maybe they accidentally used the Argentine peso ;)

AngryKitten•42m ago

You folks are completely irresponsible with your finances. I only spent $2.4 million last night. You've got to learn to manage your money.

dvh•40m ago

Prompt: bill our aws customers, make no mistakes.

zengineer•21m ago

or: Increase revenue!

themgt•29m ago

"If you owe AWS a hundred thousand dollars, that's your problem. If you owe AWS three billion dollars, that's Amazon's problem."

alfiedotwtf•25m ago

Vibe Billing

tedk-42•25m ago

far out it's 10pm here and I was just about to sleep when my wife nugged me about a billing alert from AWS.

$151 billion the number for me.

gioazzi•23m ago

Heard of somebody who got 19 quadrillion dollars - I thought they meant Zimbabwean dollars

ownagefool•22m ago

Mines was $190,594,974,587,761.20 :)

HarHarVeryFunny•19m ago

They should have added "make no mistakes" to the prompt.

astonex•11m ago

From their status page

>The second path involves rolling back a recent change to the billing computation subsystem.

Want to bet AI code was involved?

elondaits•8m ago

Woke up to a 100 million dollars in S3, which is above the USD 4 alarm threshold I had set (I pay $0.55 monthly) . Some AI decided to prune the weakest of us.

throwatdem12311•7m ago

Hey man AI makes mistakes sometimes that’s why you need to double check the output.

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