[SGVLUG] Fw: The true cost of evaluating EC2

[Emerson, Tom (*IC)]

I saw this on the OCJUG/LAJUG list, and as we had a recent demo/walkthrough of this in which a few people created accounts right then and there, I thought it worthwhile to point this out...

----- Forwarded Message ----
From: Josh Rehman <josh at joshrehman.com>
To: OCJUG - Orange County Java User's Group <ocjug at ocjug.org>; LAJUG - Los Angeles Java User's Group <lajug at lajug.org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 6, 2009 12:34:58 PM
Subject: [lajug] The true cost of evaluating EC2

Hi all,

I thought this would be of some interest to the list. Back in July I
evaluated EC2 for a few hours, but I discovered that, even after stopping
all instances and releasing all storage, I was still being charged about
$7/mo for the last 6 months. These charges were buried in deceptive language
making me think it was a single bill for 7 bucks, still far too much for a
few hours of small instance usage (which is $.10/hour), and I kept meaning
to contact Amazon Web Services customer service about it. I finally did and
it turns out that a) this was a recurring charge and b) because Amazon has
my CC on file this was not an invoice, but a receipt! So my one time
evaluation of EC2 somehow cost me $7/mo for a potentially infinite amount of
months (in my case, I caught it at 6), and of course because they have my CC
they have been paid in full each and every month. This is highly disturbing
to me.

Questions arise:

1. What was this charge even for, given that I had no instances running, and
no storage?
2. How can I stop these charges?
3. How can I get a refund?
4. How can I help others from suffering this problem?
5. What lessons can I learn about my actions as a consumer (and also
Amazon's action as a service provider)?

Answers arise:

1. Today, I finally figured out where the charges came from. For a while I
worried that someone had hacked my Amazon account. It took a lot of effort
to get any response from AWS customer support (two emails, a phone
conversation, and a 72 hour wait). Apparently EC2 provisioned an IP address
to me that, if not attached to a running instance, bills $.01/hour. Needless
to say, I was very surprised. I don't recall provisioning an IP address
seperately from an instance. In any case, EC2 should have some level of
sanity checking for items like this - or indeed, eliminate this charge
entirely as IP addresses are dirt cheap (certainly they are much less
expensive than $7/mo).

2. As for stopping the charges, I went whole hog: I not only cancelled EC2
and S3, but I removed all of my CC information from Amazon's system.
Frankly, this whole thing really freaked me out, and I wasn't taking any
chances. (Interestingly, I feel really good about removing this information
anyway - I was overdue for a hacking, I think.)

3. Getting a refund from Amazon may not be possible, especially given the
tone of AWS customer support email (the last line assured me that I would be
billed for Jan 1 and 2 - gee thanks!). However, I have sent another email
and await a response. We're talking $36.65 total, which isn't a huge amount.
I feel it would be wrong to allow them to keep the money, however.

4. I am trying to help others avoid this suffering by a) sending this email
to a couple of lists, and b) posting my ongoing experience to my blog:

  http://javajosh.blogspot.com/2009/01/true-cost-of-evaluating-ec2.html

5. There are a lot of lessons to be learned here, starting with the
importance of clear customer communication. I feel that Amazon's monthly
billing statement was deceptive, to say the least, because it wasn't really
a billing statement, it was a reciept, and did not itemize what I was being
charged for. The billing interface is terrible and also did not itemize my
bill. Amazon should send two emails: one saying that I have an itemized bill
due, and another (sent a couple days later) saying that the bill has been
paid. Others do this, and it makes it clear what is going on. Another lesson
that I've learned is to be careful when you install software on your machine
capable of executing commands like the following:

c:\amazon-web-services.exe "do something that causes me to be billed $7 per
month forever"
[substitute arbitrary number for "7"]

Indeed, in this era of cloud computing and web services, it becomes easier
than ever to loose track of what you're buying. Once you set up your amazon
account and install the tools, you can literally incur thousands of dollars
of charges from your command line by instancing lots of large instances, and
these charges are relatively hidden from you - and there is no safety net.
This makes clear feedback from the provider even more essential.
Specifically for EC2, I think it's terrible that they don't release the IP
address of your instances and keep billing you for them - that should be an
opt-in, not an opt-out option.

-- 
Josh Rehman
http://javajosh.blogspot.com