I've been putting off digging into AWS for years now, and it's because of stories like these. There really should be a standardized training course that requires no credit card info and lets people experiment for free. Instead they have some pencil pushers calculating that they can milk thousands here and there from "user mistakes" that can't be easily disputed, if at all. I'm sure I'm not the only person who's been…
It is very unusual for AWS not to issue refunds in situations like this, so I don't think it's a function of them finding an edge to milk thousands from user mistakes. More likely they've found that issuing refunds is less onerous than it would be to provide accurate and cheap tutorials. Perhaps that does not excuse the behaviour but AWS reversed a $600 charge I incurred using AWS Textract where the charges were comp…
...when asked to. But what percentage of mistakes like this end up just being "eaten" by the end-user, not realizing that they can ask for a refund? What percentage don't even get noticed?