[itsibitzi]

I've read that some people use a pre-paid credit card with a $1 spending limit when setting up their playground accounts. Seems like a reasonable approach.

[adriancr]

You will still owe the incurred charges and AWS can send it to collections.

[ValentineC]

AWS is oddly dysfunctional recently.

They nerfed the $100 of AWS credits for Alexa developers with zero notice this month, which caused me to incur overages this and last month.

I've gotten last month's bill waived, but still received a passive-aggressive email with bad English by a Territory Account Sales person from my region about how my account could be suspended, if I didn't reply to the email within the day. I'm not sure I would trust said person to handle my accounts, even if I was on a corporate budget.

I'm still in the process of moving most of my workload away from AWS.

[donmcronald]

I do this. I’d much rather have AWS needing to call me to negotiate / collect than having $15k go through my CC as a legit authorized charge.

[cube00]

Unless they call you, refuse to negotiate and still send it to collections as it is (at least in their mind) a legitimate charge.

All these stories of providers giving "good will" credit for these massive charges really concerns me when you look at how other parts of these companies ignore their customers or only reply with scripted responses.

[randompwd]

That doesn't make much sense. You would still be on the hook for the eventual bill. This sounds like a showerthought hashtag lifehack.

[viraptor]

It does change the dynamic / comfort though. Would you rather ask AWS to please revert $5k they put on your card, or talk with them about $5k they'd like to charge you but can't?

[adriancr]

It doesn't change the dynamic though.

At their revenue, don't care about 5K charge, they can send to collections / sell to 3rd party collections agencies.

They do care about keeping you happy as a customer since your employers will be swayed by their employees.

So the former is much more likely to succeed, the latter will just make you look like a scammer.

At larger sums - they will do much more rigorous checks to avoid issues.

[viraptor]

It doesn't change the dynamic for AWS. It doesn't change for many of us. But it does for example for a student who forgot to terminate a stack and suddenly can't afford rent/utilities/shopping until the charge is resolved. These are amounts which can really mess up people's lives for weeks.

[gspr]

The former. But if we're talking about $5M instead, I'd be completely terrified of both options.