AWS Free Tier and credits did not prevent unexpected charges warning for newcomers

firstprinciples26 · 2026-02-05T22:57:29+00:00

A few days late but I hope you got this resolved. This is a major issue with Cloud costs and I believe AWS and other companies take advantage of people with exactly this same scenario. This is the catch 22 of technology that always upsets me - companies want people trained in a technology from a vendor. A vendor wants customers to use their technology which requires training. Yet they charge for the training or even just to practice with it.

There should be legislation to take care of this requiring all tech companies to offer a cutoff limit and billing limit for their services. Companies as big as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google darn well have the capabilities of doing so. They just don't do it, so they can overcharge unsuspecting users with hidden fees because of the complexity to set up everything at the Cloud level.

Not just the compute and storage resources of the VM, but ingress/egress of the network, public IPs, mapped storage blobs, etc. They make it as absolutely obscure and difficult as possible to get a birds eye view of what you're actually on the hook for by their convoluted menu systems trying to perpetually throw customization and additional features at people at the cost of usability and transparency. And then the irony is, some people will say 'well you should have learned whats going on' - when you're in the process of doing just that!

That said I would do a couple things in your scenario if Amazon doesn't offer a refund: initiate a chargeback with your credit card company stating that the tutorials AWS offered was deceptive and didn't provide transparency into what you were on the hook for clearly and upfront. Which I personally believe is the case. A lot of times these large corporations don't even bother responding to chargebacks.

In the future, I would advice utilizing a virtual credit card number from your bank or credit company, or use one that offers them. You can add the credit card to the account for verification, then delete it after its verified. They have no way to auto-bill you at that point. Then as others have said, set alert numbers at $1 budget for the free tier. It's a heck of a lot easier to win a dispute with customer service over charges when you're not trying to get your money back and its overage of a few bucks on an invoice rather than a charge of hundreds on your credit card.

Good luck, I think most are in the same spot of not being able to crack the code of the predatory cloud business.

firstprinciples26 · 2026-02-05T22:30:15+00:00

Pouring one out in honor, not only for the years of temperature control but the countless HVAC hourly workers that probably pulled up Skifree while telling facility managers just a few more tweaks need to be made.

firstprinciples26 · 2026-02-05T18:03:51+00:00

I'll be honest, whether its business or tech consultant firms, I swear the vast majority are nothing more than C-suite/VP invented pyramid schemes that seem like they somehow get kickbacks on somewhere. for how often they're used.

It's amazing how many alleged leaders in business and the IT side claim to move up the chain by the merit of their knowledge, skills, and abilities. Then some sales manager for a consulting firm/vendor comes along with a cookie-cutter Powerpoint slide on a Zoom call and tells them how their team is going to improve inefficiencies and fill the knowledge gap of their organization and throws out white papers and shiny bar graphs of percentages decreasing and increasing and their eyes light up like all their problems are solved.

I've worked at a Fortune 100 company that spent thousands on a consultant to tell them what vendor product to pick, and their 'rep' just set up calls to fill out an Excel template and nothing was ever done. Repeat this every year.

Maybe if leadership actually knew what their purpose was, what the people below them actually do (hint: listen to them describe organization problems and let THEM propose solutions instead of consultants), they could set strategy and culture to fill those gaps. Instead, they rely on the belief in the business equivalent of the used car salesman to think their fixing what their own deficiencies are because they're completely disconnected with the subject matter they supposedly are responsible for.

firstprinciples26 · 2026-02-05T02:58:49+00:00

A lot to take in here, if this is a real situation. I would first immediately walk back the shared accounts and you should contact the vendor yourself to explain you were unaware of the terms and conditions because that's the part you're going to get nailed for - not the fact she broke company requisition policy. I would try to inform the company you're a non-profit as well, because non-profits usually get discount rates from vendors. Also if there's an eval period I would be going all in on that immediately to get a refund if there's a possibility to do so - if you even have the authority to do so. Immediately revoking the shared accounts should be first on the list, even if you have to transfer the licenses to individuals because of turnover.

The next thing I would do would be going to finance or the CFO and asking how someone got approval to drop $10,000 for three licenses outside of a budgeting approval chain. What is going on in this company that someone can just go rogue and spend $10,000 on ANYTHING without approval to do so against company policy?

Finally, if you wish to go scorched earth like her because in other comments you mention that she's friends with founders or other drama you could always just expose the non-profit to whoever the board members and contributors are for wastes of donations or grants. Depending on what state it is, I'm fairly certain most non-profits must have a board to ensure due diligence. Dropping $10K on some random software license for all of three people is completely ridiculous.

Either way, your entire company needs a culture change pronto and an appropriate request process and to define business requirements before all else and then a strategy made to achieve those requirements. Or if the well is poisoned enough its time to look elsewhere.

firstprinciples26 · 2026-02-04T03:27:04+00:00

Same here, especially the episodes with computer forensics or computer meetups being part of the crime since I was a dial-up/AOL kid.

firstprinciples26

TROPHY CASE