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.

Issue a chargeback.
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.

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.

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.
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.
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.