Amazon Web Services experienced a significant billing system malfunction that resulted in grossly inflated invoices being sent to thousands of customers globally. The glitch, which became apparent early on Friday at approximately 3:38am UK time, generated bills ranging from hundreds of millions to over one trillion dollars for services that typically cost only a few dollars monthly or less.
Affected customers reported receiving alerts for charges far exceeding their normal usage patterns. A charity organization’s app that usually generated bills under one pound per month was suddenly invoiced at $7.8bn. A student in Delhi who typically paid $1.28 monthly received a bill for $10.9bn, while a historian running a website normally charged $15 monthly saw an invoiced amount of $245bn. Another customer received a bill of $256bn. One user documented a usage increase listed as 745,728,201,771 percent compared to the previous month.
The erroneous charges prompted significant stress and concern among customers, with many describing panic upon receiving notifications of the astronomical amounts. Some expressed serious worry about the potential impact on their accounts and finances, with one customer noting the situation may have caused genuine health concerns for affected users.
AWS identified the issue as stemming from a malfunction in the unit pricing computation within their estimated billing system. The company issued an apology for the confusion and concern caused by the billing errors and disabled the affected estimation system at approximately 5:08am UK time. AWS indicated that complete resolution would require multiple hours as they worked to recalculate the billing data across their system.
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