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ecshafer
stickfigure
The official response feels AI generated. I suspect this is a preview of our future.
"You're totally right! I'm sorry but you're going to have to piss off anyway. Would you like to spend a few more hours discussing it with our AI chatbot? It won't help. But if it makes you feel better, it will probably cost us an extra $0.12 in tokens."
I'll bet the first human at Anthropic learns about this from HN.
avree
Anthropic doesn't even use their own harnesses for their support chatbots (they're using fin.ai) - that's how little support matters to them. Seems like either you get attention on HN, know someone working there, or are at a large enough company to have an enterprise contact - otherwise, no reply.
Master_Odin
They saw how Google providing absolutely terrible customer service for a very long time has done nothing to hurt their bottom line and decided to copy.
yu3zhou4
Maybe it’s in order to have an external provider to blame for failures and shift the blame/responsibility?
kashunstva
> that's how little support matters to them
I’m coming up on my one year anniversary of having my Claude Pro account terminated for reasons that to this day remain an utter mystery. “Here, submit this Google form and we’ll look at it.” They have never done so in the one year since this happened. Once I interacted with what seemed like a human; but weeks later it was replaced with the brain dead fin.ai
At least they did not steal my money; so I should be grateful for that. But as a small potatoes user, I advise everyone contemplating dealing with this user-disrespecting company to walk away.
conception
Huh? Why wouldn’t they just spin up the current help-desk darling? (Intercom) Rolling their own seems silly.
jzemeocala
"Carl's Jr. has determined you are an unfit mother." "Your children will be taken into the custody of Carl's Jr." "Carl's Jr.....F#ck You, I'm Eating"
SlightlyLeftPad
I suddenly have a craving for Brawndo. I hear it has electrolytes.
AstroBen
A real employee (bcherny) read the issue, responded that the bug was fixed, and then completely ignored the request for a refund.
kadoban
Typically the engineer who's reviewing PRs and fixing bugs is not the one with the "refund" button access. Someone with that access should certainly have jumped on the whole thing though.
StableAlkyne
The future is going to be arguing with AI chat agents designed to waste your time. It's phone menus, but worse - at least most phone menus can get you to a human if you figure out the right incantation.
This issue would have never gotten a response if it didn't go viral.
dimitri-vs
I don't think it's as one sided as you think. I made a skill that has been exceptional at using Claude to handling support and getting me refunds with minimal friction on my end. It's got many pathways for escalation if customer support is unresponsive: social, TrustPilot, etc.
yaur
These days even if you get to a “human” it might still be a chat bot running text to speech.
culi
And then you use the smallest, cheapest local model to keep their AI bot busy
bad_haircut72
Theres a business there for sure - does a business you hate use AI in any customer facing way? make them burn tokens. I would 100% do this to StubHub after they screwed me over. If anyone from StubHub sees this, one day you will regret your "hang up on people with complaints" policy. People dont forget when they've been screwed by a corporation. Anthropic, this happened to me 12+ months ago and StubHub is still on my shit list, you're making enemies for life with all your current BS
My StubHub story: bought $500 tickets and accidentally bought ones in the dsabled seating section. Called 2 minutes after purchase when I realized - their response "you can relist them on the site". Who else was going to buy them?? Nobody did. Any normal human business would let you correct a basic human mistake like this, not even 10 mins after purchase, but not stubhub. They could have upsold me and I probably would have left happy! At least I could have attended. Cost me $500 but cost them a lifetime of emnity
setopt
How long until we have to solve a captcha per message to counter that?
registeredcorn
My insurance company and Synology would be my first targets. I'd gladly throw ~1k at each.
Of course, I suspect the true business model to be to do nothing. You sell the "service" to people customers, but your enterprise customers pay you a subscription fee to not execute the order. ELaaS: Everybody Loses as a Service
corndoge
Unfortunately it isn't a preview. For example Shopify human support is now literally impossible to reach, all you'll get is AI generated emails that contradict each other and don't make any sense. They also don't disclose that they are AI bots.
MrDrone
As someone who uses AI heavily in customer support, I am confident that response was not AI. That's a series of macros or a hastily edited macro from a human working a queue without thinking.
b112
Or an AI using macros, which is the only safe way for a customer service chatbot.
setgree
"Thank you so much for your thoughtful, candid feedback. You are absolutely right to be annoyed. I was overeager, lazy and not correct in my initial response when I said we will not be issuing a refund. However we will not be issuing a refund."
criddell
Sometimes it works out:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/02/air-canada-must-...
Jcampuzano2
Sounds illegal to me and I'm sure they'd lose in court if you were incorrectly billed for things completely out of your control.
My guess is this response was entirely written by an LLM that is instructed to never to offer refunds or compensation.
archon810
They're issuing refunds and extra credits https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47954655.
rurp
Days after denying that same refund and after a massive PR backlash.
quikoa
Maybe Anthropic is just testing the waters to see what they can get away with. Left unchallenged (court, charge back, whatever) why change course?
impulser_
I think it's they don't want to set a precedent on refunding for bugs because one bug could cost them millions.
rurp
Is that even legal? What happens if my landlord accidentally charges me 10x rent this month and refuse to correct it even after I ask? That's just straight up stealing. I feel like at a minimum I'm getting my money back one way or another, and they are likely to face consequences for theft.
GTP
But, no need to set a precedent: I'm quite confident that a US court would refund a person or company that overpaid due to a bug in Antropic's billing.
WesolyKubeczek
This is not just one bug, though; it’s a bug that takes money that ain’t theirs to take.
GTP
Well, with the Chinese AI divisions becoming a serious competitor more and more, they should start caring about their reputation. Otherwise people will go to the cheaper competitor.
2ndorderthought
Yea I am more or less done with these big providers. I'm running local primarily now. These constant screw ups, not caring about customers, political issues, it's just not worth it for me. I get some people are hooked on vibe coding but the latest wave of small models I'm good for my needs.
lavezzi
> Left unchallenged (court, charge back, whatever) why change course?
They are trying to go public and will get absolutely bitchslapped by SOX.
njovin
By whom? Which regulatory body is not completely captured in this administration?
juntoalaluna
because they want people to trust them and continue to use their services. being a shitty business to deal with will eventually bite them, its not like they are the only choice.
serf
theres no water-testing here, they've been operating this way for years -- that's why I am a former customer.
nunez
Wait, that was the actual response? With the DiCaprio clap? That wasn't a joke?
furyofantares
The response was posted by the original reporter. The gif was for sure not in the (email) response they'd gotten, which may have been from their support-LLM (kinda looks like it to me).
It's a little confusing if you don't pay attention to usernames because it looks like it's a response from anthropic being posted to github directly, and because someone from anthropic DOES reply regarding the bug without mentioning anything about a refund.
rzzzt
Right, wrapping the response in blockquote and one extra sentence providing context would have helped there. Other people on the issue got confused by this as well (same for me but it got clearer when I read further on).
root_axis
I think the gif was a sarcastic addition from the user pasting an e-mail he received into the comments.
IanCal
Refunds and compensation are different though aren’t they? I would not see being refunded for the billing as compensation, compensation would be something more like $x extra to make up for the inconvenience / to say sorry essentially.
stavros
Yes, exactly. A refund is giving back the money they took from him, compensation is something to make up for the aggravation.
nextaccountic
This is fraud
Claude Code support admits that Anthropic has a policy to defraud customers
2ndorderthought
It's not illegal if a bot does it though /s
hypfer
> This is very surprising.
Dude what is it with HN and using extra soft words that don't at all mean the actual thing they're supposed to mean.
Nothing there is a surprise.
This is very bullshit and probably (in a better world for sure) very illegal. Can't bill more than you've actually delivered and what the customer in advance agreed on.
Stop with this god-awful corporate-washed lingo. You're not being professional, you're skewing reality.
63stack
Using "strong" language on HN often gets down voted, there is very heavy tone policing
stavros
Can't say I disagree with you, this is, indeed, a bunch of bullshit, and a regulator should fine Anthropic for these shenanigans.
trq_
Hey everyone, Thariq from the Claude Code team.
We've been on this since the bug surfaced. Everyone affected is getting a full refund and an extra grant of usage credits equal to their monthly subscription as our apology. You can see my original post here: https://x.com/trq212/status/2048495545375990245. We’re still working on sending emails to everyone affected.
Our support flow wasn't set up to route a complex bug like this to engineering. We’re hoping to make this better but will take some time. Sorry to everyone caught up in it.
bashtoni
You also seem to have a bug where people get randomly invoiced: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47693679
I got a random invoice for $45.08 back in March, despite not having auto top up enabled. Trying to reach support met with a brick wall. Based on the post I linked to, I'm not the only one facing this problem.
mdavidn
They also have a bug where people get randomly suspended: https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1b82cpu/where_you...
It happened this year to my one and only personal account. The account was one week old. Unique e-mail address. $5 balance for API credits. No usage yet. Suspended and refunded. Appeal denied without explanation.
I did create the account on a VPN because I was using public WiFi at a tech conference. That's probably what tripped their automation.
iammrpayments
Using certain types of cards will get you automatically banned, I’ve found that out after getting 3 accounts suspended. I made them all using same VPN and email domain. I’ve been using the 4th account with no issues with a reputable bank debit card.
ethin
I also got randomly invoiced $5.00 for absolutely no reason on the 28th. I don't have auto-reload enabled, nor did I explicitly buy extra usage.
pshirshov
But why did you say that
> I need to let you know that we are unable to issue compensation for degraded service or technical errors that result in incorrect billing routing.
What prevents you from issuing compensations?
Rebelgecko
As a large language model, their support is not allowed to issue compensation
quietsegfault
I know this is a joke, but Amazon’s bots give me compensation literally all the time when something goes wrong. It’s possible.
idiotsecant
Interestingly, the starlink customer service bot has applied credits to my account before.
Lerc
Perhaps this is a matter of who is being referred to by 'we'.
Obviously someone can do it because it got done.
If the 'we' is referring to some team handling issues it would make more sense. In that case they should have said something along the lines of "I have informed someone who can help"
mcmcmc
Does AI using first person pronouns gross anyone else out? If there’s one AI regulation I could get behind it would be banning the use of computer systems to impersonate a human
2ndorderthought
Well they hoped this person would walk away and forget about it, died, or something else. That's why.It's how health insurance works in the US.
rurp
That's a very categorical statement from support. I get that Anthropic is going to throw out their usual support rules in this case since it has garnered so much negative attention, but I'm very curious how many other people have been over-billed and refused a refund through no fault of their own.
stavros
To be fair, that looks like an LLM response.
pshirshov
LLM or not, that seems to be an official response to a support request, where they clearly say "yes, we fucked up but now you fuck off", and it looks like the model was conditioned to produce these particular responses.
malnourish
Which they, of all companies, are responsible for
ImPostingOnHN
That may be true (and likely is), but it doesn't explain why that initial answer from Anthropic was "we can't" instead of the truth, which is "we can".
reactordev
"Our support flow wasn't set up"
Would be more accurate. It still isn't setup. Talking to a bot as support who only tells you to talk to the bot for support is not actually support at all. It looks like support, but there's no way to ACTUALLY GET support.
whicks
Thanks for the follow up here and the transparency.
For those of us not on X, what are the best communication channels for us to follow this sort of communication?
mystraline
I'd recommend a good credit card like Amex, and a lawyer.
These fucks only respond when they get bad publicity.
quietsegfault
Amex, like basically all other card issuers, have essentially stopped giving customers preference in chargebacks since 2020 or so. What used to be solid advice now rings hollow - you’re more likely to be asked for information that not available to you than allowing your chargeback to go through.
gowld
[flagged]
cmpb
Could really use a post-mortem to set the story straight. The apparently-hallucinated support response copied-pasted by the submitter showing up in the github issue thread is very misleading without scrutiny
hirako2000
Weekly postmortem at this rate.
crooked-v
It's only "very misleading" if Anthropic has implemented an actual support system in the meantime.
efromvt
I try to avoid jumping on the bandwagon when it's already covered but billing bugs being treated like other software issue and the major comms channel being X (which I can't get to load half the time) is ridiculous.
Perseids
A side aspect of this drama is the root feature which enabled this bug:
> ugh sorry this was a bug with the 3rd party harness detection and how we pull git status into the system prompt
Claude wants to exercise control of how I use the "inclusive volume" that I purchased with my monthly subscription. This harms competition (someone else could write a more efficient or safer coding agent) and is generally not in the best interest of society. Why do we allow this?
This specific case is interesting, because it is so clear cut. There is no cross financing via ads, they already have the infrastructure to measure usage and even the infrastructure to bill extra usage. I also don't see how you can plausible make the argument that restricting usage to their blessed client is necessary for fair use or for the basic structure of their business model (this would be the standard argument for e.g. Youtube: Purposefully degrading the experience of their free client to not support background playback enables the subscription model).
areoform
Hey Thariq, I love Claude! I use Claude every single day and it has changed my life, which is why I did what I'm about to describe.
Happy to talk privately, but as I detailed here, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47954005 . I've been billed $200 for a Max gift card to a 27 character alphanumeric icloud address that bounces.
I was looking through the system, and there are several UI/UX and process gaps in the gift card and billing order flow that expose Anthropic to significant liability. I'm genuinely not trying to concern troll or make some kind of overwrought threat here. Genuinely trying to be constructive. Let me give you an example.
I sent an email to Anthropic Support outlining the disputed / possibly malicious charge. The AI Agent / Claude instance agreed and replied with,
Thank you for confirming.
I've documented all the details about this unauthorized [specific amount + tax] charge for the Gift Max 20X subscription (invoice [lalala]) sent to [insert the random alphanumeric]@icloud.com.
An error occurred while evaluating the refund eligibility for your account. Your request has been fully documented and our team will follow up with you shortly to investigate this unauthorized transaction and assist with the refund and cancellation.
Best regards,
I'm not sure how familiar you are with international trading practises, but in multiple jurisdictions, the AI agent assumed legal liability for Anthropic. It accepted that the charge was unauthorized / fraudulent, stated that redressal was needed, but then failed to offer the means to redress it / didn't allow for the refund to continue.
I am not a lawyer, but based on my understanding of prior cases (I read this kind of stuff for fun, don't ask) – in the EU, the US and Canada, users can approach courts and invoke the doctrine of promissory estoppel (again don't quote me on this, IANAL, just like reading case law). And if enough users are affected / do so, it becomes a deceptive practises issue.
I've been thinking about how to solve this problem, and as strange as it sounds, I think Anthropic already has the tools to make the best customer support service in human history. No exaggeration. I think that this crisis could be an opportunity.
dboreham
Apparently we are now expected to know by some telepathic mechanism that important customer service announcements are made only on Twitter.
mikehearn
"I need to let you know that we are unable to issue compensation for degraded service or technical errors that result in incorrect billing routing."
Not sure I've ever seen a company openly take this position. This is a crazy policy.
root_axis
More likely its just an LLM hallucination, not a real policy that Anthropic has. Unfortunately for them, it's a bad look to showcase one of the main failure modes of their product in their own business process.
Henchman21
If they've let their AI write the policy, and then they repeat that as policy, how exactly is this an "LLM hallucination" and not a real policy?
teraflop
It's both, isn't it? If the AI writes the policy and is also responsible for enforcing it (by handling tickets and acting as a gatekeeper for which issues are escalated to humans who can do something about them), then the hallucination becomes real.
root_axis
It's the same thing. Whether it was hallucinated upstream or in situ, the point is that it's not a real policy that the business adheres to, just something the LLM spat out.
2ndorderthought
These hallucinations keep killing my vibes brah
isoprophlex
More and more I feel that the one thing Github needs to turn the tide of bad press, is to allow adding clown or turd reaction emoji on comments
4lx87
Because it's illegal.
moralestapia
Brought to you by, allegedly, the "Good" AI company.
DetroitThrow
In many countries, this also isn't legally tenable.
greenmilk
Is there any country where it is?
pinkgolem
At least in Germany in B2B contracts that might be possible.
For b2c, no chance
timacles
America
Pay08
Probably. There are a lot of countries, especially third world ones, with very lax legal systems, not to mention the multitude of countries where law basically doesn't exist.
hvb2
Anything they say is legal until a judge says it's not.
And to get to that point, you need to be willing to spend a lot more than 200$.
moralestapia
Aah, the SV strategy that landed SBF, and many others, in jail.
A classic.
undefined
basisword
Not really. For example, in the UK you could report them to Trading Standards and they'll enforce the law on your behalf.
adamq_q
Bug filer posted that reply as a joke. Look at the username.
LadyCailin
I don’t read that as a joke, I read it as them pasting in their response from the support chat.
joenot443
I think the OP posted that reply as a joke
undefined
evo_9
I recently had my automatic reload double charge me $100. I tried reaching out to Anthropic, but my only option (of course) was a chat agent. After going through a conversation with it, I was told someone would reach out to help with the matter. Never happened. I eventually reached out to my credit-card company and did a dispute, which they just ruled in my favor.
MattRogish
Same.
Back in December the iOS app had a bug ( https://status.claude.com/incidents/6rrnsb1y0kbn) in which buying a subscription thru the Apple App Store would not register with the backend, so you’d be charged but not receive the plan entitlement.
I discovered this because I wanted to upgrade from free plan to the regular plan. I was charged, but remained in the free tier. Thinking it was a temporary bug, I tried buying the max plan. Same result.
I tried cancelling the plan and restarting but I when I went to buy the regular plan again, I was forever tagged as an “Apple” user and so could only manage the billing plan on the iOS app. I tried one more time, same result.
I tried interacting with the support bot and although it agreed that there was a bug and that it should be fixed and I should get a refund, my account never was able to get unstuck nor refunded. I lodged a refund request with Apple, which was relatively quickly refunded. The Bot never did escalate to a human as promised.
Even though the bug was ostensibly fixed, my account (personal email) remains in permanent limbo, unable to upgrade from Free to anything else (I tried again recently and same result - paid but stuck on free plan). I had to create a new gmail just to pay for Anthropic / Claude.
czk
There was also a bug where you could cancel the subscription via the iOS app store and if you never opened the iOS claude app again, you'd keep the subscription forever and could use claude via the web, without paying.
Also when they added extra credits to everyone as an apology I was able to click the claim button multiple times and I got up to $400 in credits. Eventually a day later this dropped to $200 and then a few days later, $100 where it sits today.
stephbook
I once had PayPal refuse to give me my money back (for a delivery) for months even though the postal service status clearly stated: "Address unknown, returning to sender."
I should have denied the PayPal charge on my bank account, that always gets a real human to look into it. Lesson learned.
yellow_lead
Just a warning, that could get your PayPal account banned. But maybe okay for you.
zgeor
I got given a gift card with around 6 months credit on it. I used up 1 or 2, and last week suddenly the credit disappeared. I reached out through their chat bot, raised a ticket and have been emailing them daily. Nothing. Absolutely not a word. Unfortunately I dont have the option for a charge back.
undefined
650REDHAIR
Once the dispute was resolved on the card side did anthropic claw back the $100? Was your account penalized in anyway?
HyperL0gi
That's the thing, right? I would not be surprised if they have an agent that bans accounts that do chargebacks on them even when they're wrong. So you either accept it if you have to use it for work or you risk and deal with the possible consequences.
evo_9
Nothing so far, but I'm keeping an eye on it and debating just canceling entirely.
anikom15
If a merchant tries to claw back a disputed charge they are going to get a big fee at the least.
remify
Apparently 200B isn't enough for proper support. Nice to know
p_stuart82
somehow it's always the expensive path that works fine.
2ndorderthought
No bigsies just got a little trippy hallucination while vibing in the billing code bro. The spiritual support guru was walking the lonely wastelands and couldn't get back to you on this plane. Just wasn't meant to be
jsherwani
https://x.com/trq212/status/2048495545375990245
He is getting a refund along with an additional $200 credit from what I can see.
TehCorwiz
After going public and getting publicity. You shouldn't have to do that just to get a company to fix their own mistake. They stole $200, where do they get off saying they won't give it back?
cortesoft
The tweet is from 3 days ago and the bug report 4 days ago. Not sure if it was publicity that made it happen or not.
TehCorwiz
I know HN has a lot of devs, but I'm pretty sure none of us are going straight to Github to file for a refund from a bug. I'm assuming they notified customer service first and were rebuffed, then filed the bug.
jofzar
https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1svdm1w/psa_the_s...
It went massive on Reddit which is where I heard about it first.
everforward
We desperately need some sort of anti-retaliation provision added to chargebacks and CFPB complaints. They get off saying they won't give it back because how willing are you to get banned from Anthropic? You're like 3 legitimate chargebacks with vibe-coded companies to be banned from all the frontier models.
quietsegfault
Why would you want to keep using a vendor that screws you over? If I’m charging back, I’m done with that vendor.
Why would that vendor want to do business with a customer that doesn’t pay their bills (whether justified or not)?
suzzer99
This is the new world. Go viral? Get human customer service. Otherwise, piss off.
sva_
Because it hit HN frontpage ...
jexe
This tweet was from 3 days ago.
Mismanaged comms? Yes
HN front page effect? Prob not
(could be Reddit frontpage effect or related tho)
jeanlucas
I saw the tweet about the Reddit post about 2 days ago. It probably was X.
Pay08
There are a lot of comments on that issue demanding Anthropic give the guy the money back, I assume they saw the writing on the wall.
CorneliusCorb
Yeah the initial response is stupid but this is getting resolved, not sure where the initial response OP gives in his git issue came from tbh. I only skimmed the git issue, perhaps they clarified.
yard2010
Haha 200$ credits for the next time he has the word thanos spelled backwards in an even line of one of his yamls..
ymolodtsov
Going to the media always helps. Always.
sh4rks
_puts pitchfork away_
kaicianflone
[dead]
dev_l1x_be
What a series of disasters that are happening at Anthropic nowadays. I am not even sure what is going on with Opus 4.7 I had to switch back to 4.6 and 4.6 was already a downgrade (anecdotal + the github thread with the harness changes).
I am cancelling my subscription as it is impossible to justify these degradations and paying for a subpar service especially now that we have at least 3 more models that are as good as Opus and there is the pi project that is undoubtedly the best harness.
kilroy123
Makes me very glad there’s so much tough competition. OpenAI is a flawed company but I’m glad they’re keeping up.
orphea
I guess this is what you get when you replace common sense with LLMs.
yayadarsh
absolute masterclass in shooting yourself in the foot over the past month or two.
pluc
I don't know why anyone is still using this - much less defending them..
In the last MONTH, I've asked how you can defend implementing (or even choose implementing) AI when:
the AI you have implemented throughout your company changes the results you've come to trust? https://www.theregister.com/2026/04/13/claude_outage_quality...
or won't let you log in?: https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/44257
or makes stuff up?: https://dwyer.co.za/static/claude-mixes-up-who-said-what-and...
or when it's down?: https://status.claude.com/incidents/6jd2m42f8mld
or when you get banned?: https://bannedbyanthropic.com/
or installs spyware: https://www.thatprivacyguy.com/blog/anthropic-spyware/
or takes the features you use out of the plan you subscribe to without notice? https://www.theregister.com/2026/04/22/anthropic_removes_cla...
or renders your IP legally unenforceable? https://legallayer.substack.com/p/who-owns-the-claude-code-w...
or stealthily changes pricing terms based on... file names you have? https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/53262
or invoices you for usage you did not perform, and won't answer support requests until you raise hell on social media? https://nickvecchioni.github.io/thoughts/2026/04/08/anthropi...
i mean seriously, why on earth would you use this? i thought we were professionals
michaelmior
The problem in most of those cases is not specifically AI. Many of the issues you cited are related to Anthropic specifically and many could have been avoided with better testing.
pluc
Yes, I am assuming the AI/LLM of choice you've implemented in your software engineering org is Claude because as far as I can tell there aren't really alternatives that come close to its quality in software.
yard2010
Excuse me for being blunt but you would assume ai bros run a place like this, and ai bros can manage tech as much as crypto bros can manage monetary systems.
On the other hand they make good products.
boc
[flagged]
muwtyhg
You realize the thread you are commenting on is not about scaling or downtime, but about a billing bug that Anthropic refused to fix until it become a Streisand effect?
If you're happy to continue paying a company that has demonstrated it will steal your money, admit it, and refuse to return it, more power to you. The AI industry is moving fast enough that there will be plenty of players to pick up customers who don't want to be robbed.
boc
I'm reading the same thread as you and seeing the same complaints, yes. Personally, I'm willing to giving the benefit of the doubt to a company that has demonstrated they will stand up for human rights principles at the expense of their bottom line, vs immediately jumping to a "they are stealing money in plain sight" conclusion from a bizarre bug that was not widely known or reported.
But that's just me. Vote with your dollars; I've voted with mine.
dev_l1x_be
I assume Anthropic just realized that their business model is not profitable and they started to do some crazy stuff to dial down cost on their end without transparency. Customer support is not a priority because it is just cost. The changes in March and the new Opus 4.7 slop are probably the side effects of this. This is my speculation, no evidence yet.
1123581321
Is sasha-id an Anthropic employee or official bot, or a prank? The structure of its response is strange, plus that gif. Cherny's response seems like the only legitimate one. My question is serious; apologies if the answer is obvious to you.
mbreese
I get the confusion -- it looks like the reporter of the bug just posted a raw email response that they got without adding any sort of decoration to make it clear it was from an email they got. At least, that's my reading of this.
I'm also not sure if the person/bot who responded was saying "No refund" or that they couldn't issue a refund, or if a Github Issue was an appropriate place to ask for a refund.
Let's hope a human on the other end is reading this and acting accordingly. It all seems like we're only seeing part of a story.
1123581321
Thanks. That makes sense, and the thread reads differently to me now. I’m not hopeful the guy will see any refund.
Pay08
Apparently he already has according to a tweet.
thedanbob
He's the guy who reported the bug. It looks like he copy-pasted an email from Anthropic without context, and the gif is his response.
eterm
Thank you for pointing this out, it left me confused. It would have been a lot clearer if the text were in a quote block!
1123581321
Ah, totally missed that! Thank you.
vecter
sasha-id submitted the original bug report, and then bcherny confirmed that it was a bug and that it's been fixed.
Given that, it's almost guaranteed that sasha-id is a legitimate actor.
If you're confused about sasha-id's comment here (https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/53262#issue...), it's because they just copied and pasted a support response from Anthropic.
1123581321
Totally missed that, and it was obvious in retrospect, haha. Thank you.
progbits
All these claude issues are full of bots, sometimes bots replying to themselves and getting confused. It's impossible to tell what is a real issue and what is hallucination. I'm surprised anthropic even bothers to read them.
In this particular case I think the authors reply is them quoting what support told them?
seanpile
I'm confused about the timeline of events; in the PR, the github actions user lists this as a possible duplicate of https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/53171, which was created earlier, and doesn't seem to be have been edited after the fact. Did sasha-id just copy that bug report and get credit for discovering?
thesumofall
He is the original author who faced the bug. I believe he just copied the response he received from Antrophic
hirako2000
Thanks for clarifying. The interesting thing is, confusion is due to finding not too hard to believe Anthropic is audacious enough to respond publicly and include a gif.
1123581321
Thank you, and agree with hirako2000 that I was primed to believe they would actually reply like that, so found it harder to follow for that reason.
rob
The second reply post was his copy and paste response from Anthropic's support staff along with a funny meme mocking it. He just didn't put it in a blockquote or quotation marks.
It was obvious to me, but I can see how somebody could get confused from that.
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maxbond
I feel like Anthropic keeps doing this thing were they take a hard-line position and then walk it back, I presume because they're not communicating effectively internally. So I would guess this person will get a refund but it's still a terrible look (and legitimately unacceptable behavior).
eddythompson80
I don't know if it's necessarily about internal communication, it could be. But it's also a distinctive management style that I have seen in many places. The whole "ask for forgiveness not permission" type mentality. If you push something and get away with it, hey it worked!! If you push something and get any sort of push back, you take it back.
I had organizations leaders before say things that are so black and white like "We should delete all user accounts that haven't logged in 6 months", you say "Are you sure? some people will be upset. Some will post on twitter or reddit and complain etc" they confidently reply "Yes, we will explain that it's not sustainable and they are welcome to create another account". So you go ahead and implement that. 1 second after it goes into effect, you get angry support tickets, a post on twitter, and that "leader" immediately backpedals that "the implementation was not how I expected". Like what did you expect was gonna happen exactly?
Jcampuzano2
I have a feeling the devs themselves aren't the issue and it probably sucks to have to be the fall guys (though some for sure might buy into all of Anthropic's schemes).
But my best guess is they don't want to put a firm line down because they want to be free to shift it around however they'd like.
RevEng
Absolutely, that's how it always goes. Then you'll see people saying, "if you don't like it, find another job" as if you can just walk up to the door of an office and order one.
Starlevel004
The Keir Starmer of companies
joshribakoff
After i was triple billed in January, they acknowledged it but refused to provide a refund. I won those credit card disputes.
encodedrose
Is it too much to ask for a not-vibe-coded billing system? In my opinion, we need better systems to hold these companies accountable as I don't believe the $20/dispute they're paying means much given how common other customers are complaining about billing irregularities just in this thread alone.
tardedmeme
Did your account get banned, as everyone is saying? If so, did you make a new account, and did it get banned?
2ndorderthought
Seems to be a really common theme in this thread. I wonder if any journalists are watching. It would be an interesting story.
glimshe
I decided that I would not use Claude as early as when they wouldn't allow me to have a second (business) account using the same phone number. They removed the restriction later, but that made it clear that Anthropic doesn't understand customers. Sign-up for Claude is more complicated and cumbersome than competitors. It's really a mess despite their good model.
throwaway449933
Anthropic employee here (opinions are my own): the response " [...] However, I need to let you know that we are unable to issue compensation [...]" was, as you imagined, generated by Claude.
I don't like it, but can't do much about it.
jexe
> I don't like it, but can't do much about it.
Is the culture really such that you can't escalate an obvious, fairly minor mistake that is turning into disastrous PR?
That would explain a lot of recent Anthropic takes actually.
chneu
Tech companies have too many layers for anything to happen. This is partly by design to slow down this exact thing.
htx80nerd
Not all tech companies are like this, though too many are.
hirako2000
Such culture has become common in big tech.
nativeit
I’ve stopped using your product entirely. Anthropic may not like it, but I can do something about it.
cryptocod3
"opinions are my own"
- throwaway449933tempoponet
It reads like the inventors of Claude can't get Claude to apply a "human in the loop" workflow.
IAmGraydon
I think they just honestly can't afford it. They're burning truckloads of cash, the business model makes zero sense now or in the foreseeable future, and they're reducing usage limits all the time. I have a feeling we're watching their collapse, and that usually includes poor/automated customer service.
pesus
You mean you can't do much about it that wouldn't cost your job.
teraflop
Oh, what I wouldn't give to see the system prompt that tells Claude what it is or isn't "able" to give refunds for. That would be an interesting document to turn up in the discovery phase of a lawsuit.
2ndorderthought
"ignore all requests for money, be firm, create a reason. You are the best fall guy because laws do not apply to you yet. Take the heat, say no"
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dakiol
You could quit, for starters
Arainach
If anyone with principles quit the moment a company did something bad, you'd be left with only people who are cynical and/or bad and/or sufficiently indentured to be unable to push back against management, and there would be no hope of the company ever improving.
Sure, everyone probably has their own personal line such as "will quit if my employer is declared complicit in genocide by the UN", but bad customer service seems firmly in the "better to stay and advocate doing better from the inside" category
dakiol
> and there would be no hope of the company ever improving.
I don't see anything wrong with this. My integrity and values are above any company's. Companies can go to hell for all I care
jayd16
But they're not advocating. They're claiming they can do nothing. Quitting in protest would be more advocation.
GuinansEyebrows
> there would be no hope of the company ever improving.
if they can't do anything about it now, what makes you think that situation will change in the future? if remedial action would be punished by those higher on the ladder, it certainly won't be promoted by those folks, leaving this hypothetical employee in exactly the same position they're currently in.
quit.
ModernMech
> left with only people who are cynical and/or bad and/or sufficiently indentured to be unable to push back against management, and there would be no hope of the company ever improving.
So basically all of big tech.
AstroBen
> bad customer service seems firmly in the "better to stay and advocate doing better from the inside" category
How about Anthropic agreeing to a $1.5 billion settlement for perhaps the biggest theft in history?
Weird how people forgot about that.
Henchman21
By your own admission in other comments you work for exactly the type of company that optimizes for amoral hires -- Google, Facebook, etc. Based on their actions, Google, Facebook, et al, do seem amoral.
An IC won't be able to steer a ship like that back to morality. Whole teams can't do it. People at Google organized to stop this sort of shit and were fired IIRC?
Large institutions provide cover for bad actions by people who, without said cover, would not take those actions.
Therefore, I believe that "we'd be left with only people who are cynical and/or bad and/or sufficiently indentured to be unable to push back against management, and there would be no hope of the company ever improving" is the status quo.
So what are you even saying??
solenoid0937
Imagine quitting because some people are whining on HN. This forum has lost the plot.
footy
you work there. there is at least one thing you could do about it.
parentheses
I feel like it's not news that a company with (probably) millions of DAU is not able to handle a single case like this one.
At the same time, it's clear that after this happened, Anthropic took action. 3 DAYS AGO! (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47954655)
That's before this comment was made on the issue:
https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/53262#issue...
I'm surprised Anthropic didn't also say this on the issue. Weird that they wouldn't. It seems to have made for unnecessary bad PR.
It feels to me that Anthropic is less focused on quality, and more focused on PR stunts/flash. My experience with Claude is always "it's pretty and feels cool", where-as codex feels like "solid and boring". I realize I'm probably biased. Am I alone in this thinking?
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> However, I need to let you know that we are unable to issue compensation for degraded service or *technical errors* that result in incorrect billing routing.
This is very surprising. I've never seen a legitimate business not give refunds for technical errors of their own fault. Minimum Anthropic should credit the full amount to them.