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HERMES.md in commit messages causes requests to route to extra usage billing

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Re: HERMES.md in commit messages causes requests to route to extra usage billing

#481

Post by dijksterhuis »

kryogen1c wrote: post #438
Master_Odin wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sorry this is totally unrelated but it caused me to have an epiphany: Google is not a software, hardware, or SaaS company. They are an ad-funded moonshot R&D incubator, searching only for billion dollar lightning strikes. Every part of their business exists only to broker and sell ads or capture more market share to show ads to or to collect and trade data/Metadata for better ad targeting.

netflix is tv/film licensing. [0]

facebook is a people database. meta is more people databases. [1]

contracting companies sell additional employee time to other companies.

welcome to the epiphany that many tech companies aren’t primarily software focussed. i was lucky to have a lecturer at university point this out to us fairly early on.

[0]: they started doing production — but that was just to be able to license more tv/films ;)

[1]: phrasing it like that puts a truly horrifying spin on their ad/data brokerage stuff i’ve just realised

Re: HERMES.md in commit messages causes requests to route to extra usage billing

#482

Post by areoform »

trq_ wrote: post #264

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…

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,
And then no one followed up, the conversation was closed without recourse and I wasn't allowed to reply.

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.

Re: HERMES.md in commit messages causes requests to route to extra usage billing

#483

Post by comonoid »

stickfigure wrote: post #12
ecshafer wrote: post #3

> 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.

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.

Read it aloud with GLADOS voice.

Re: HERMES.md in commit messages causes requests to route to extra usage billing

#484

Post by vobrizan »

kadoban wrote: post #468
AstroBen wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A real employee (bcherny) read the issue, responded that the bug was fixed, and then completely ignored the request for a refund.

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.

Boris Cherny (bcherny) is the Head of Claude Code @Anthropic. I believe he can refund whatever he wants.

Re: HERMES.md in commit messages causes requests to route to extra usage billing

#486

Post by crooked-v »

cmpb wrote: post #288
trq_ wrote: post #264

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…

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

It's only "very misleading" if Anthropic has implemented an actual support system in the meantime.

Re: HERMES.md in commit messages causes requests to route to extra usage billing

#487

Post by yellow_lead »

stephbook wrote: post #77
evo_9 wrote: post #56

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.

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.

Just a warning, that could get your PayPal account banned. But maybe okay for you.

Re: HERMES.md in commit messages causes requests to route to extra usage billing

#488

Post by hansmayer »

ecshafer wrote: post #3

> 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.

Not surprising at all. They probably feel or expect to have many such issues that are not surfaced yet, because like with OpenAI goblin "issue" we see that these guys have no clue what they are doing.

So giving this guy his 200$ back would open the flood gates for other such requests. Their behaviour, as much as it is weird and antisocial, perhaps even breaking some laws - is completely logical in their own weird world of "Datacenter PhD nation" or whatever other bullshit they use to hype up their "product".

Re: HERMES.md in commit messages causes requests to route to extra usage billing

#489

Post by ElFitz »

ecshafer wrote: post #3

> 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.

Edit: As a kind someone pointed out, I made the wrong assumption that the first response was entirely Anthropic’s, and not the author.

~~I mean, the worse part is the gif at the end of the message.~~

~~What are they even trying to do? What are they trying to convey? It just feels like being given the finger and getting my face rubbed in it on top of that.~~

Re: HERMES.md in commit messages causes requests to route to extra usage billing

#490

Post by pbowyer »

stefan_ wrote: post #371
csoups14 wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would imagine it's the simplest answer: they're flying by the seat of their pants, there's 1000 things happening every day that demand attention and there's not enough of it to go around. They toss their LLM at it, give it a cursory glance, and ship it. A quick glance at the Claude Code source code bears the result of this process out. The fundamental question is, if their model is so powerful, why do they keep fucki…

Hermes is one of these OpenClaw clones, so this was certainly intentional, not a model hallucinating something. I think the problem is clear. Anthropic saw their usage go up much more than their capacity could handle. There are a few tried and true solutions to this, like "increase the price" or "restrict signups so you can guarantee service to what you have already sold". Then there is the "large scale fraud" option…

> Hermes is one of these OpenClaw clones

So that's what it is. Reading its README I thought it was another harness like Pi [1], but with built-in memory so it remembers what it learns, and gets more capable the longer it runs.

Like Letta [2], Dirac [3][4] and the other "more experimental harnesses that look interesting but I haven't had time to try out".

1. https://pi.dev/

2. https://www.letta.com/

3. https://dirac.run/

4. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47920787

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