Ask HN: AWS rejects my request to close my account, is it legal?
In short here is what happened:
- Signed up to AWS and created AWS Organization.
- Created member account in AWS Organization and made a typo in root email domain. Resulting email happened to be on a valid domain I have no control of. There is no validation step when creating member accounts, it is just an API call.
- Decided to stop using AWS and close everything down.
AWS provides one way for customers to stop using AWS service offerings - by closing all AWS accounts. Account closure is done by signing in as root into every account, which for member accounts requires password reset with new password sent to email. Due to typo in a member account email I can't access it.
I've been in contact with AWS Support and basically they said, that because I can't close account, which I created myself, I can't leave and terminate services. They keep me hostage.
Best they could offer is to apply IAM controls to "suspend" everything, but technically accounts have to stay and should AWS introduce new charges for accounts, however unlikely, I'll have to pay.
Not asking for a leagl advice, obviously, wanted to ask is there anything in law you know of which can be used to end this engagement. I could just cancel credit card and be done with it, but it really rubs me the wrong way and I want a clean way out.
I am in Europe.
If you don’t want to be an AWS customer at all, why don’t you send a written termination notice under the AWS Customer Agreement (https://aws.amazon.com/agreement/)?
Section 7.2(a) says, “You may terminate this Agreement for any reason by providing us notice and closing your account for all Services for which we provide an account closing mechanism.”
Since your requests for an account closing mechanism have been refused, it would seem to me that a notice alone would be enough, if it’s sent by one of the methods allowed by section 13.10(b), includes a termination date (required by section 7.1), and identifies the account to which it applies.
If you haven’t already, before you send a notice, I’d suggest taking the offer from AWS Support to suspend the services, so that when the notice is received and processed, it will be clear that the account is no longer in use. Mention this in your notice, along with the support ticket numbers, to show that you’ve tried in good faith to close the account.
I don’t know if terminating the agreement in this way would affect Amazon’s willingness to do business with you in the future.
I've made this mistake, and all it took was opening a support ticket from the root (payer) account to have them update the email address for the sub-account. Did you ask them to do that?
Since the typo is a valid domain, get in contact with that person, explain the situation and close the account. Domain in use? talk to the owner. Domain parked? buy it. Yes, it's stupid, Amazon should solve it, but you can try different approaches.
I’ve got an AWS account associated with an email on an old business domain that I no longer have access to (it expired and someone else bought it). They still charge me $0.57 per month and I have no way of recovering the account to cancel it.
I don't fully understand the details but what do you want from Amazon ? what if the email was correct and you are a bad guy trying to cancel it for someone else ?
AWS does not validate the email during account creation ?