An update on my AWS bill

The last 48 hours have been surreal. When I typed up the experience up yesterday morning, I was not expecting it to get more than a handful of votes on Hacker News.

As I watched the discussion yesterday I was warmed that people both cared about my plight and found it useful to have a reminder. All that while, the case with Amazon slowly progressed. They first answered and asked me terminate the stopped instances. They indicated that once this was done they would put in a request to waive the fees (subject to approval).

Overnight (I’m in Australia), this has been approved. I still can’t see it from the Billing Console, which I’m told is normal, but I’ve been informed in the support case that Amazon will be crediting the entire bill. Yay!

There was part of me, when I saw this bill, that knew what Amazon’s response would be. I don’t deserve that kind of relief after leaking my key, but Amazon has always been a cut above.

In my interactions with Amazon Account Managers and Architects (work account), Amazon has consistently cared about people being efficient in their instance usage. They have gone so far as to suggest changes that would wipe thousands off a monthly bill.

With this experience they have reinforced, to me a least, that they value me as a customer for the long term. I will one day be paying Amazon $3000 dollars a month, but I hope that it will be the bill for, an as yet non-existent, startup that is skyrocketing to success :D

This is all without mentioning that Werner Vogels stopped by the Hacker News thread (The ticket was already on it’s way to being dealt with by that point, but it was amazing).

Finally, thanks again to all the supportive people over the last 2 days.

Discuss it on Hacker News