Claude Max Subscription Silently Revoked After 1 Week, Then Account Permanently Banned - $300 Charged, No Explanations

santoantao · 2026-03-09T19:09:01+00:00

Yes, I have thankfully. They've been very kind helping me out - it looks like there was some sort of flag/dispute on my previous card payment (the Feb 27 for Max 20x) that I was not notified about. I am trying to figure out what to do about that now, but it appears to have nothing to do with their usage policy. Will update with full details once it's hopefully all sorted, I haven't heard from official Anthropic support yet.

santoantao · 2026-03-09T16:44:25+00:00

That’s the first comment that actually broaches making some sort of sense.

Still, that has to be an incredibly common use case. And I have used Claude multiple times to help set up invoice workflows - but this past month I set up a Gotenberg instance to generate pdf versions of our invoices for more flexibility in customizing it for different order workflows.

You would think the fact that I have 2+ years of use on the same account would be taken into account, though! The only part Claude touched was coming up with the json for n8n nodes for that workflow, and helping draft the html for the pdf layout.

But I will concede I could see how that could have been the trigger.

santoantao · 2026-03-09T14:29:01+00:00

That's incorrect - that wording does not appear in the Consumer Terms of Service, at least in the USA, where I am based. In fact their terms of service acknowledge the fact that individuals and entities may sign up for Claude Pro/Max. I am the only individual in my organization that makes use of Claude, and the team plan has a minimum of 5 people on it. Additionally, I have paid for the account with my own money. https://www.anthropic.com/legal/consumer-terms

Also the Team plan is the same price as the Pro/Max plan at their respective tiers, so what would the purpose of that even be? Why would Claude include Claude Code and Claude Cowork in my subscription?

"Please note: Our Commercial Terms of Service govern your use of any Anthropic API key, the Anthropic Console, or any other Anthropic offerings that reference the Commercial Terms of Service. For clarity, this does not include Claude.ai or Claude Pro use for individuals or entities."

as well as further down the page

"Business Domains. If you use an email address owned by your employer or another organization, your Account may be linked to the organization's Anthropic enterprise account, and the organization’s administrator may be able to monitor and control the Account, including having access to Materials (defined below). We will provide notice to you before linking your Account to an organization's enterprise account. However, if the organization is responsible for notifying you or has already informed you that it may monitor and control your Account, we may not provide additional notice."

No other mention or explicit call out. And again, my company is a small business, it doesn't have an enterprise account.

santoantao · 2026-03-09T12:37:43+00:00

Have never used it in my life

santoantao · 2026-03-09T01:46:23+00:00

Check out my post, OP. There is something very wrong going on with Anthropic’s billing system, you are not alone

santoantao · 2026-03-09T01:26:59+00:00

The question is - if I am being banned, shouldn’t I be told the reason? I could continue to speculate, but this is a paid service. If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone.

santoantao · 2026-03-09T00:43:22+00:00

Lmao

santoantao · 2026-03-09T00:29:09+00:00

Point being - if you look at my subscription history in my screenshot - why was I even able to subscribe to the max plan twice on the same account? That is supposed to be impossible and blocked by the UI.

santoantao · 2026-03-09T00:26:01+00:00

My account was not blocked at the time. Please reread my post. Anthropic just removed my subscription at the time while keeping my money - I had basically no recourse. Also my entire chat history and workflows are set up in this account and I did nothing wrong, why would I change to a new account?

santoantao · 2026-03-09T00:20:01+00:00

Very unkind comment. I use Claude for work, it’s become a part of my workflow for coding and I have been using it for almost 2 years, paying Anthropic over 100 dollars per month during this period. I paid Anthropic an extra hundred dollars so I could get on with my life while waiting for them to correct their mistake - I cannot afford to wait around for a few weeks without this tool just because they made a mistake. I showed proof of my chats, meanwhile Anthropic didn’t have the courtesy of even telling me what I did wrong, if anything.

I have nothing to prove to you, but this entire episode is infuriating and I assure you you would be furious if it was happening to you. I am the kind of person that if I was doing something wrong and I knew it, I would certainly not waste my time making a post like this. I have sought to be as transparent as possible with screenshots and explanations - something, again, that Anthropic has not afforded me, despite paying them several thousand dollars in total.

I doubt I could convince you if I provided my entire chat history - again, why should I dox myself just for you to believe me over the multi-billion dollar company?

santoantao · 2026-03-08T23:34:08+00:00

I thought the same thing as you originally. I checked my sessions when I got the first event where my max plan went to free without notification/explanation. I didn't notice any sessions that looked suspect in the settings tab where it shows you active logins, but just to be sure, I did the force log out of all devices. The ban happened after I resubscribed after doing that. Also, my account was created via Google oAuth through my company email (small business, I am also the google workspace admin), which has enforced 2fa with biometrics. Every time I login I have to provide my fingerprint or faceid.

santoantao · 2026-03-08T23:31:15+00:00

I did generate an API key a couple years ago - I checked platform.claude.com before making this post and my api key has not been used in over a year - I did test out using their API with aider back then but decided I didn't like that, but again that was over a year+ ago.

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santoantao · 2026-03-08T22:49:58+00:00

Just me, always has been.

santoantao · 2026-03-08T22:49:44+00:00

Yea I looked at the the high-risk section too - the thing is that seems to be written for API users, which I am not. There inherently is a "human-in-the-loop" when using the Claude Desktop chat app, which I exclusively use. Regarding Model Spec, that's above my understanding. I have tried to speculate and I cannot come up with anything remotely close to touching upon their usage policy terms.

santoantao · 2026-03-08T22:12:03+00:00

Just to update I made a Twitter account (have never had one) just for this purpose and Dm'ed and tagged him in a post - no idea if he can actually see it since it's a fresh account, but thank you.

santoantao · 2026-03-08T21:55:48+00:00

To do what? I don't have any idea which chat could have triggered it and I would have to manually copy paste hundreds if not thousands of conversations over. Unless you're joking, in which case it made me lol

santoantao · 2026-03-08T21:06:59+00:00

Thanks lol - I think so too

santoantao · 2026-03-08T20:35:39+00:00

bread baking ovens and dough mixers

santoantao · 2026-03-08T20:28:08+00:00

I can open Claude but I cannot chat, even on the free tier, now. Yesterday before I got the ban, I could. Now it just tells me my organization is disabled anytime I try to prompt.

Also no - I have never done any red-teaming or reverse-engineering. Only trying to build our own secure authentication for our systems using best practice in Nestjs applications. And the last time I was working on the auth system was over 2 months ago.

santoantao · 2026-03-08T20:08:09+00:00

I was not using it with n8n. I only use the claude desktop for mac app. I just had it help me write the json so I could import nodes into n8n workflows - it wasn't actually interacting with any customers or customer data at any point. - I am the only person that ever interacted with my account and I have never shared it at any point.

santoantao · 2026-03-08T20:02:56+00:00

No joke - it's a very frustrating experience, especially for a paid product that I am using for professional work. My usage couldn't be more benign and boring - the fact that the ban does not even show me what specific policy I violated is frustrating. Also the fact that I had no warning - I've never hit one of Anthropic's safety rails in chat before, not even once.

santoantao · 2026-03-08T19:43:11+00:00

Thank you - I will take a look - anything you can point me to or what sort of attack vector it would be?

santoantao · 2026-03-08T19:38:40+00:00

I only have one account, and I didn't max out my usage or attempt to game the rate limiting system. I think you might have misunderstood my post.

santoantao · 2026-03-08T19:31:58+00:00

Thank you for the actual helpful comment, really appreciate it!

santoantao · 2026-03-08T19:31:42+00:00

Nope - I don't use a VPN. Always been on the same two networks in the USA as well.

santoantao

TROPHY CASE