It's also unnecessary. Give users cost controls, then you won't need the current mess of hoping support will write off $$$ of mistakes. With a risk of bankrupting a small shop if support doesn't help it drives risk averse users towards less dynamic offerings.
Isn't AWS supposed to focus on the virtuous cycle of saving customers money (or at least reducing AWS supports need to write off customer mistakes)?
I always have the feeling of a bit of “randomness” with these kinds of compensations. It makes sense, as it’s difficult to “codify” these types of things, lest they get abused and you might as well just lower your prices at that point.
AWS is a large organization; I believe this type of stuff highly depends upon your “entrance” into the organization, i.e. the account manager. We were probably just unlucky with our Redshift troubles, but it did eventually trigger a move to Google Cloud / Bigquery, as the pay-as-you-go method seemed a bit safer (although it’s still too difficult imho to accurately estimate the costs of queries).
Isn't AWS supposed to focus on the virtuous cycle of saving customers money (or at least reducing AWS supports need to write off customer mistakes)?