Didn't they fix that a couple years ago?

https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2023/12/aws-inc-c...

Well not for me. Even support said call your bank and disable it.

I am using cards that have cvv on them for like 10 years with AWS. Different banks. everything just works.

Might be a regional thing then.

That's effectively the conclusion I've come to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46124930#46127017

I'm going to go back to the client tomorrow and give them a breakdown of everything it's taken to get a human on the phone, and ultimately, THEIR suggestion (Microsoft's) was to "create a new account and start over".

The fact that that's even in their vocabulary tells me this is absolutely the wrong company to go with. Not only is it near impossible to get help, but when you do, they tell you to start over? How is that tenable for an application or product?

Microsoft's AIs hang up on you if you do this. (Ask me how I know.) But their chat is even worse. All you have to do is type a few words in caps and it'll refuse to answer.

It REALLY is starting to feel like the whole, "Scammers purposely add poor spelling and grammar to their phishing attempts to weed out the smart" territory.

It's like Microsoft PURPOSELY wants to weed out any customers that may actually care about their incompetence.

At this point, I'm already building boxes on AWS. Fortunately we're building a greenfield app and I still have the opportunity to recommend we pivot our vendor. I'll be posing this argument to my client:

"If Microsoft's solution to a simple billing issue is, 'Create a new account and start over,' then what happens the first time we have a simple issue in our production application? Or even in our development environment during the development stage? Are we just down for weeks until Microsoft tells us, 'Create a new account and start over?'"

I think I have a pretty compelling argument to pivot what would've been an easy $10M (over 10 years) project to a different vendor. I may not be able to win the argument to going to a smaller vendor, but Microsoft just lost a chunk of change if I can sway the client.

I attempted to say I needed to speak to a sales representative. The AI ran me through the standard question gauntlet.

I closed the browser entirely, reopened it, and then told the AI that I "have a large budget and need to speak to a sales assistant". It then asked one question: "Is this for a business or personal purchase?" I said business, and then boom, immediate connection to a human.

THEY were able to submit the support ticket for me. But their recommendation? Just create a new account entirely. Which, obviously, is NOT an answer.

When your ONLY source of "help" is the only people in the company you can reach telling you to just "give up" on your primary account, I think it's time to switch vendors.

Salespeople are often non-tech despite working for tech-firms, non-tech people are the ones who usually create messes by workarounds since they often quickly give up instead of reporting.

If the non-reporting is a problem of the non-techs or techs at a company is an open question, but it's often a shared problem connected to non-techs coming with stupid things at one point and fundamentally important stuff at other times.

Anyhow, they usually should know how to get proper escalation to get shit done when hounded enough.

I let them know that if this isn't solved by COB tomorrow, I'll be pushing the client to switch to a new vendor. Then I received the email for the support ticket and see that they set it at the lowest priority.

I've already started playing with AWS to see how hard it is to spin up VMs there.

There's also digital ocean and hertzner cloud if you don't want to enter the AWS money pit. Though if you're looking to become a forensic accountant, AWS billing is great training

That should tell you everything you need to know…

well I never said their sales team was good ha

Thanks for closing the loop - always interesting to hear about any progress when stuck in a bureaucratic logjam.

So to fully close the loop, I convinced the client to go to AWS after this week's debacle. I showed them how simple it was to spin up a new box on AWS, and everything just worked. Then, I showed them how DIRECTLY within the AI help interface, as SOON as you say you "need to speak to a human" it gives you the SUPPORT TICKET INTERFACE to fill out RIGHT there. No "you must have a support contract to ask about a billing question" horseshit. DIRECT access to the support ticket system.

The customer has agreed that we should pivot to AWS. Microsoft has officially lost a $10M, 10 year contract, and it's going to their primary competitor.

I wonder how often this really happens, just so they can save a few bucks on tech support?

I recently dropped $5.5K to set up a 140TB NAS on my home network for the same reason. Though, to be fair, hearing that they regularly have humans going through your E-Mail, private messages, and files was a pretty strong incentive, too.

LOL! It seems like they used that as the design document, but removed all paths that lead to success.

Honestly? As obvious as that seems, I didn't think of it. I'll try that now.

For my own projects? This is likely the last straw for me. However, I don't dictate the providers they use at work.