Error z Amazon Web Services’ billing operations have led some customers to believe they owe the world’s fifth most valuable company billions of dollars. Oops!
Bill Radjewski, who runs CollegeFootballData.com, was one of the affected customers. This morning he was woken up by shaking e-mail alert from AWS: it has accumulated over $1.5 billion in usage fees and its August 1 bill was expected to exceed $3 billion.
“I have had this account for over 6 years, and in that time my monthly expenses have never exceeded $0.02,” Radjewski tells WIRED. He shared screenshots of his last three monthly AWS invoices. Each one was $0.01.
From the response to the AWS support account on X, it appears that Radjewski is not alone. Others received similarly shocking quotes: $22 billion; $75 billion; $110 billion. “Bloody hell, why did you hit me for $5 million, what did I even do,” one user he wrote. “Please explain man, my heart is going to explode.”
When reached for comment, Amazon spokeswoman Aisha Johnson referred WIRED to AWS Service Health Dashboard. While it’s unclear exactly how many customers are affected, the dashboard characterized the issue as “global.”
The dashboard also stated that the billing console “began displaying incorrect estimated billing data” on Thursday, July 16 at 10:38 p.m. ET.
The company began investigating the issue about six hours later, according to the dashboard, and concluded that the “root cause” of the error was a “unit pricing issue in the estimating subsystem.” It is not specified what this is about.
In subsequent updates, AWS said it was “rolling back a recent change to the billing calculation subsystem” and said it was trying to revert to “the last known good bill estimate calculation.” It also said that “calculations of estimated settlements have been suspended.”
The issue should be resolved by this weekend, and “no customer action is required at this time,” the company wrote.
Ultimately, some customers decided to publish posts through it.
One Reddit user posted screenshot their current “Cost and Usage Overview” on the AWS subreddit, which shows that they have incurred $7.1 trillion in service fees since July 1, more than twice Amazon’s market capitalization.