{"id":697022,"date":"2026-07-17T17:40:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T17:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/697022\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T17:40:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T17:40:10","slug":"amazon-web-services-customers-receive-bills-for-up-to-1-5tn-after-global-glitch-amazon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/697022\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon Web Services customers receive bills for up to $1.5tn after global glitch | Amazon"},"content":{"rendered":"

People always suspected big tech was greedy, but not quite like this. Patrons of Amazon<\/a> Web Services have been landed with panic-inducing monthly bills running as high as $1.5tn for subscriptions that usually cost less than the price of a cup of coffee.<\/p>\n

From Bangalore to Bolsover, the bills have been causing alarm after a computer glitch resulted in the astronomical invoices being dispatched around the world by Jeff Bezos\u2019s company, which provides data and cloud services<\/a> to millions of customers, from students and small charities to big businesses.<\/p>\n

The erroneous Amazon Web Services bill sent to a UK charity. Photograph: Learning Through Landscapes<\/p>\n

\u201cI almost had a heart attack when I received an email alert from Amazon Web Services with the billing for our charity\u2019s school grounds audit app, which usually costs us less than a pound per month,\u201d Dan Harvey, the head of marketing at the Hampshire-based Learning Through Landscapes told the Guardian. It was not even the end of the month and Harvey\u2019s bill was standing at $7.8bn (\u00a35.8bn), somewhat more than the previous month\u2019s 43 cents.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had to have a real dig around with our tech support team, while I was in full panic mode, trying to find what was going on in our account,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Another user, Bharath, posted on X with a screenshot of his bill calmly informing him his usage was up 745,728,201,771% on the previous month: \u201cI just saw $1.5tn on my AWS bill and my soul left my body.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sachin, a student in Delhi, usually pays $1.28 a month but was billed $10.9bn. \u201cCould you please investigate,\u201d he plaintively asked AWS support<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in Bolsover in Derbyshire, Andrea Zuvich, a historian of the Stuart period who runs a website called The Seventeenth Century Lady, recounted a \u201chorrible half hour of extreme stress\u201d after she was informed her bill had reached $245bn \u2013 not far shy of Bezos\u2019s net worth, according to Forbes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur usual bills are around $15 a month,\u201d she said. \u201cYou can imagine we were pretty surprised \u2026 On a more serious note, this may have alarmed some people very greatly, and even have caused health issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m terrified,\u201d said another customer after learning they were apparently on the hook for $256bn to the Seattle-headquartered tech company. \u201cHow did this happen?\u201d<\/p>\n

The answer: a global glitch by the giant cloud services provider that claims \u201cwe strive to be Earth\u2019s most customer-centric company\u201d. The crazy figures started to be displayed on the AWS billing and cost management console at 3.38am UK time on Friday and as the shock, worry and bemusement spilled across social media, the company apologised \u201cfor any confusion and concern around these costs\u201d.<\/p>\n

After an hour and a half of investigation it found \u201can issue with unit pricing within the estimated billing computation subsystem\u201d and shut off the bill estimation system.<\/p>\n

It said in an update<\/a>: \u201cWe expect full resolution to take multiple hours as we work through recomputing the estimated billing data.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the nasty surprises kept arriving on customers\u2019 dashboards. As Gerred, an X user in Maine, put it: \u201cGood morning to everyone enjoying their heart attacks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amazon has been approached for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"People always suspected big tech was greedy, but not quite like this. Patrons of Amazon Web Services have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222004,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-697022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=697022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697022\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=697022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=697022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=697022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}