nickvec15h 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
Show threadhs8613h ago

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.

Show threadjondwillis13h ago
Issue a chargeback.
Show threadMostlyStable13h 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.
Show threadyadaeno13h 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.
Show threadstavros11h 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.
Show threadValentineC10h 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.

Show threadstavros10h 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.
Show threadxyzzy_plugh
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.
11:57pmWeb
Show threadstavros9h 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.
Show threadValentineC8h 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.