Key Takeaways
- Anthropic attempted to charge a free user $16.6 million.
- The user initially suspected phishing but found the emails legitimate.
- An incorrect automatic credit reload setting caused the error.
Anthropic, an artificial intelligence company, has acknowledged a billing error that led it to attempt charging a free user from South Korea $16.6 million. The incident first came to light on July 7 when the user received a failed payment invoice for $1,669,875.90.
The user, who was on Claude’s free plan and had no registered payment method or API usage in his dashboard, initially suspected that the invoices were part of a phishing attempt due to their unusually large amounts. However, he later discovered that the emails originated from Anthropic's official billing system and contained links connected to Stripe, which provides payment services.
Despite the user’s claims of zero API usage, screenshots showed two attempted overseas transactions from an identified US merchant as Anthropic. His bank declined both attempts due to exceeding the card’s transaction limit. No funds were transferred in either case.
Anthropic later informed the user that the billing error was caused by an incorrect automatic credit reload setting. The company stated it had disabled this setting and restored the account's billing configuration, confirming that the user did not owe any money. However, the incident raised concerns about automated billing controls within the company.
The user reported spending four days trying to obtain written confirmation from Anthropic that his invoices had been cancelled and his account cleared. He sent around 18 emails during this period but received only automated responses until a human support representative eventually responded.
Criticism was directed at how the case was handled, with the user arguing that an invoice of such magnitude should have received a faster response from the company. Anthropic’s public service-status page did not list any billing-related incidents for July 7 or 8, though it recorded several technical problems affecting Claude models and services during those dates.
While the attempted transactions failed and no funds were collected, the incident highlighted potential issues with automated billing systems that can generate unusually large payment requests without matching customer usage. The case has sparked discussions about the need for better safeguards to prevent such errors in the future.
