An internal system glitch at Amazon Web Services triggered global panic after sending erroneous monthly invoices reaching up to 1.5 trillion dollars to users who normally pay minimal subscription fees, as reported by The Guardian on Friday.
The technical issue affected the AWS billing and cost management console starting at 3:38 a. m.
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UK time on Friday, hitting customers ranging from students to charitable organizations worldwide.
Amazon Web Services subsequently disabled the automated estimation tool after tracing the problem to a unit pricing error within its subsystem.
Users Shocked by Massive Charges
Dan Harvey, head of marketing at Hampshire-based Learning Through Landscapes, said, “I almost had a heart attack when I received an email alert from Amazon Web Services with the billing for our charity’s school grounds audit app, which usually costs us less than a pound per month.”
The organization discovered its pending bill had spiked to 7.8 billion dollars despite previously paying only 43 cents.
“I 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,” said Harvey.
Another customer named Bharath shared a system screenshot indicating a massive multi-trillion percent usage surge on the social platform X.
“I just saw $1.5tn on my AWS bill and my soul left my body,” said Bharath.
A student based in Delhi named Sachin faced a similar multi-billion dollar charge instead of his usual nominal fee.
