[pbhjpbhj]

>They have no idea I manage large (not huge) AWS deployments

I wonder if that is true? Like, how tenacious are they with knowing customers? If the same IP address was used to login to manage two deployments would customer service see a potential link in their interface?

I'm never quite sure in our supposed data-driven economy how clever companies get with this stuff.

[benterix]

First, if this is private vs corporate, they are probably using a separate laptop, likely with a VPN. Second, doing this kind of shadow profiling is a lot of work with potential legal consequences with little gain, at least for support teams. For fraud detection, that is a completely different thing.

So I think a simpler explanation is more plausible: they are selling AWS at such a premium that they can afford normal human customer service and still make a lot of buck.

[dmd]

As a very small (like, two digit spend a month) AWS user, I still have gotten a human to help me when I've needed one.

Amazon is amazing to be a customer of. Just not an employee of (not one, know many).

[0manrho]

AWS specifically has a policy of having strong support regardless of how much money they're getting from you, be it $5/mo or $5,000/mo. They definitely have the resources and signals to connect the dots, but it doesn't necessarily effect whether you get support, unless that SigInt tells them you're abusing the system (Eg Scammer/Spammer/Bad Actor) in some way. More money certainly seems to get you better support, but even entry level users still get decent support, and any SigInt connecting of the dots that may or may not be happening doesn't seem to have an impact unless you're using the same billing/contact info or account. That said, I can't objectively say what their customer support reps actually see regarding that kind of info, but after 2 decades of working with clients big and small using or considering AWS, I can confirm their approach to support is genuinely quite good, especially for the "Cheaper" end of offerings compared to competitors.

Hell, they still treat me well despite being a very out-spoken critic socially, and professional have steered a lot of clients away from their ecosystem and thus am objectively responsible for very real losses in revenue; though ultimately still surely a rounding error to their bottom line.

For context, these days I primarily work in helping people deploy performant and/or secure storage systems and associated networks. "This is how much money you're wasting by using AWS/the cloud" is a common approach for us, and the most common counter-point is how good AWS support is (and they're not wrong).

TL;DR: I have lots to criticize about AWS, but their support isn't really one of them, it's genuinely good especially for small users. Also, for many people AWS is perfectly fine, I still use them off and on myself. I only allege it's a "waste of money" in specific situations, but that's also largely subjective of course depending on what's important to you/the client.