The recent malfunction of Amazon Web Services’ billing systems has left numerous customers believing they owe the tech giant billions of dollars. What a blunder!
Bill Radjewski, operator of CollegeFootballData.com, experienced this firsthand. Waking up to an alarming
email alert from AWS, he was stunned to find his bill projected to exceed $3 billion for August, despite previously only collecting over $1.5 billion in royalties.
“I’ve maintained this account for over six years, and my monthly expenses have never surpassed $0.02,” Radjewski documented to WIRED. He provided screenshots showing that his last three AWS monthly bills totaled merely $0.01 each.
According to responses to X’s AWS support, Radjewski isn’t the only one shocked by these figures. Other users reported staggering bills of $22 billion, 75 billion, and $110 billion. One user humorously questioned: “Brad, why did you pay $5 million to hit me? What did I do to deserve this?”
I asked. “Please clarify; my heart feels like it’s going to explode.”
In response to inquiries, Amazon spokesperson Aisha Johnson informed WIRED of the issue’s characterization as “global” on the
AWS Service Health Dashboard.
According to the dashboard, the billing console “began displaying incorrect estimated billing data” on Thursday, July 16, at 10:38 p.m. ET.
Amazon began its investigation roughly six hours later and attributed the error’s “root cause” to “a unit pricing issue within the estimated billing calculation subsystem,” though specifics were not disclosed.
In a follow-up statement, AWS announced it was “rolling back recent changes to the billing calculation subsystem” to revert to “the last known successful estimated billing calculation” and had “suspended the calculation of estimated claims.”
The company anticipates resolution by the end of this week, assuring customers that “no action is required for customers at this time.”
Meanwhile, some customers took to social media to voice their frustrations.
A Reddit user shared a current “cost and usage summary” on the AWS subreddit, revealing they had racked up $7.1 trillion in service fees since July 1, exceeding Amazon’s total market capitalization.
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Source: www.wired.com