URGENT: AWS Permanent account closure !!!!!!!!!!!!!

For some odd reason, our account is on the verge of deletion.

As a young startup, we didn't know about certain costs and auto-scaling problematic configurations, which isn't a unique case. We started fighting these emerging costs on January, and in March and April, we desperately called for help at the support panel - without any meaningful input. Unfortunately, as a small team with vast AWS products, we couldn't pay attention to some costs until it was too late. When we realized our costs were extensive, we cut them by 70% MoM, and due to various items on our agendas and insufficient AWS experience, it took us a few months to realize where the rest was coming from.

Eventually, on June 5th, we accelerated our mapping and submitted a ticket with real-time updating activities - we started turning off service by service with the aspiration to be leaner than ever. On June 16th, during an extensive effort to solve the issue, and a day before we were supposed to meet an AWS export to close the rest of the services, our account, emails, and domains - were off. I called AWS customer support multiple times that night with a sensible request to temporarily unfreeze the account for 2-3 days to complete the process to stop the irrelevant machines and cut any possible irrelevant costs.

I called multiple times daily to stop the billing since they're not allowing me to cut my spending. On July 5th, we got accepted to AWS x Anthropic GenAI accelerator, which granted us an additional $10k in credits. However, we couldn't get those since our account was frozen. So - we got into a paradoxical loop. We can't pay immediately, and while I applied for a loan, the preserving costs are accumulating our debt. On the other hand - credits that are valid for the later months (July on) won't be applied and help us hedge the debt - since the account is frozen.

Finally, on July 21st, I got a partial amount from the debt and immediately tried to pay from the console. My card's frame wasn't big enough, so I tried AWS Customer Support again. It took AWS almost 2 weeks to understand how they bill me alternatively. I sent proofs for my transfer ($3625), and to this day, I don't see any debt reduction in the console.

Also, despite the customer support’s initial agreement to release our account after paying our initial debt, once we finally succeeded in transferring the payment (due to the tedious bill transfer), our account reopening was rejected since we passed the deadline they gave us on July 12th.

The damage is enormous and unmeasurable! We had to stop our development, our mail and website were down, we couldn't present the product to investors and customers, and we lost a dozen opportunities to initiate pilots an, hence - reduced chances of returning the debt.

Amazon’s first Leadership Principle is Customer Obsession: "Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers."

We took responsibility for our mistakes and tried to resolve them, but we were caught in a rollercoaster of errors, inefficiency, and failure to address customer problems. As far as we understand from those who work with AWS, this inefficiency is unprecedented. We feel ever since we encountered the first signs of the incoming issue somewhere on March that, we're fighting against a thick brick wall, and even if we would go 200mph - it won't crack.

All we ask now is for our debt to be forgiven, our account to be restored, and for us to have the opportunity to recover. Our bootstrapping startup is an AWS SLA, Nvidia Inception, and AWS Gen AI alumnus. Our machine-learning capabilities are proven. We built it proudly on AWS and wish to keep doing so.