Mastodawn

nickvec 21h ago

I've been waiting over a month for Anthropic to respond to my billing issue

https://nickvecchioni.github.io/thoughts/2026/04/08/anthropic-support-doesnt-exist/

I’ve been waiting over a month for Anthropic support to respond to my billing issue

In early March, I noticed approximately $180 in unexpected charges to my Anthropic account. I’m a Claude Max subscriber, and between March 3-5, I received 16 separate “Extra Usage” invoices ranging from $10-$13 each, all in quick succession of one another. However, I wasn’t using Claude. I was away from my laptop entirely and was out sailing with my parents back home in San Diego.

Nick’s Thoughts

I tried their Pro plan on March 1 and immediately noticed how bad their usage limits were, so I asked for a refund that same evening.

Their chatbot accepted the request, I was downgraded to the free plan immediately, and since then I have been waiting for the money.

nickvec 18h ago

Yikes. That's unacceptable. Crazy that it has been over a month and you still haven't gotten the refund.

jondwillis 18h ago

Issue a chargeback.

MostlyStable 18h ago

It's important to remember that a chargeback should be considered the nuclear option, and, when using it, one should be comfortable with the possibility that one might never do business with this company again, since it could result in being blacklisted (even if one is, in fact, in the right). I'm not saying not to do it, but one should keep in mind the potential repercussions.

master_crab 18h ago

I always wondered about this. Do companies tie the credit card to an identity to block or do they just block the cc number?

If the latter, seems like a small friction point for a consumer. Given how often cc numbers change and how many an (American) consumer has, this won’t block anything unless you are charging back more than once every few months.

SyneRyder 16h ago

It's up to the company, but since many companies don't want to keep card numbers around (and some processors don't let you see the card number anyway), they're probably more likely to block on identity. Maybe flag the IP address of the transaction for "additional screening" on all future transactions, etc.

nubinetwork 16h ago

CC numbers are also bound to get recycled eventually as cards expire and/or get replaced... even if you block a card, it might have a new owner 6 months or so later.

ValentineC 15h ago

The number space between the first 6 digits (BIN) and the Luhn check digit is 9 digits — that's 1 billion numbers that issuers can give out before a collision happens.

FireBeyond 16h ago

Except the banks have "helpfully" provided a service to merchants to tell them, "this card has expired, here is the new number to charge" (or expiry/CVV).

I remember getting into an argument with a bank teller about me wanting to block/dispute transactions and how they kept approving transactions. "But you have an agreement with the gym..." That's between me and the gym, not for you to facilitate on their behalf.

barkingcat 18h ago

waiting for month for a refund (and having lost access to the pro plan immediately but no immediate refund) is definite grounds for chargeback.

there is no human on the other end of the chain, and I bet that chargebacks are how they issue refunds (ie relying on the "nuclear" option as the standard practice of how refunds fundamentally works at their company.

ie "don't need to answer emails about refunds, because if they really wanted their money back, they'd issue a chargeback" as part of the regular procedure.

a lot of companies do this, and it's a common way of minimizing customer support budgets.

yadaeno 18h ago

If a business attempts to steal from me I instantly charge back and the onus is on them to prove that I owe them money. I do this all the time and have never been blacklisted.

butlike 18h ago

Yeah that kind of seems like antiquated fear-mongering. Next they should call the BBB and leave a strongly-worded review!

nekusar 18h ago

wait, int the BBB just boomer yelp?

sonofhans 17h ago

Believe it or not, back in the mists of time we had these things called “public institutions” which were at least notionally chartered to, and in fact somewhat did, act in the public benefit.

The BBB was one of those — not always perfect, but consumer-friendly and not out to scam or profit. Yelp is just another VC-backed money play. They do not now or have they ever claimed or intended to make the world a better place without regard for their own profit.

collingreen 17h ago

You joke but I got bbb involved with a scammy business insurance company that is easy to sign up for but you can't cancel or stop renewal or change billing info. Company has an infinite hold line and never responds to anything. Filed a complaint on BBB and it was responded to next business day.

I don't think it's helpful to think about this as the company "trying to steal from you". There is no intention here. It's just something that got lost in a bad IT system. You gain nothing from issuing a chargeback. You imperceptibly nudge some statistic and a "banned for life" flag might automatically get flipped in a database. There's no righteous comeuppance here.

You try to contact support, pester them a bit, call someone if possible, and eventually, you may get your money back. If you don't, then you issue the chargeback.

DANmode 17h ago

> There is no intention here.

You don’t think it’s funny how the mechanism for taking the money is never broken?

Work with a large company who won’t pay your 30 or 45 day invoice for 90 days before you broadly decide this.

stavros 16h ago

I have a few customers like that. They sign up, forget about it, then they see it on their statement and issue a chargeback. Not only do they get their $20 back (that they very willingly signed up for), but I have to pay another $35 to Stripe for the privilege of having a forgetful customer who couldn't even be bothered to email me for a refund.

ValentineC 15h ago

> I have to pay another $35 to Stripe for the privilege of having a forgetful customer who couldn't even be bothered to email me for a refund.

I've seen some businesses send a pre-billing email telling customers that they'll be charged on a certain date, so that customers have time to cancel if they want.

Cloudflare does that for domain renewals, sending out emails 30 and 60 days before.

Of course, there are also some businesses that hope that customers forget that they're subscribed, so that there's breakage.

stavros 15h ago

Mine is a one-off payment :( They just forget they paid for it, plus the company name isn't the same as the app name, so they just go "welp, someone must be stealing from me!" and request a chargeback.

xyzzy_plugh 14h ago

Anecdotally I helped a client entirely eliminate their chargeback rate by creating a new subsidiary named directly after their product, so that the billing line item was obviously the product. They also saw a slight increase in inbound sales, which surprised me.

stavros 14h ago

That's a great idea, but it's only helpful above a certain sales volume, which I don't really have. It's just disappointing when the charge back happens, but the economics of the business don't really warrant doing anything about it.

ValentineC 14h ago

Were you dealing with some other payment processor or bank that didn't allow custom statement descriptors? Stripe and PayPal let me write whatever I want there.

mootothemax 14h ago

Completely by accident, I have a setup that sends a pdf invoice to customers a couple of days after the sale. I’m pretty sure it’s a stripe option I must’ve misclicked.

Anyway- turns out that on the rare occasion someone’s had an issue, this gives them a really easy mechanism to write to me and tell me about it. They let off their steam in the email and then we make things good together. (Yet another reason why I always oppose noreply email addresses)

I still don’t know what or where the setting is, mind.

BeetleB 16h ago

With some of the large companies, blacklisted is a real concern.

eBay is one known example.

I've heard the same for Amazon (forget if it was retail or AWS).

It's cheaper to lose your business than to have a proper human review every complaint.

saintfire 14h ago

I've charged back amazon over retail issues that they did not deem worthy of providing me a human to interact with.

It whined about it for a bit on their site but eventually just gave up. Works normal again.

alpaca128 14h ago

Some companies like Activision clearly state in their terms that chargeback means you will be permanently banned, no exceptions. You'll lose your account and access to all digital "purchases" forever.

They don't need to prove anything to stop doing business with you.

nitwit005 17h ago

This is, yes you were robbed, but what if you want to partner with the bandit later?

They'll just rob you in your future interactions too.

malfist 14h ago

But what if the robber becomes a monopoly and you have to partner with them in the future? Who's gonna save you? Government?

subscribed 18h ago

Did you follow up? You might need to do it again before charge back.

Thankfully that's not Google, so your life is not going to be turned upside down because they don't give a f*.

I opened a new ticket over three weeks ago to ask about the status of the refund, and that has been left untouched as well.

Now I have submitted a reclamation request to my bank and am waiting for a response.