Seeking Guidance: Pending Charge Waiver Request for Accidental ACM Charges

Question

Hi AWS Community,

I am seeking some advice regarding a pending charge waiver request. I am a final-year software engineering student, and I recently incurred an unexpected charge of $95.50 (including taxes) on my account.

This happened while I was setting up SSL/TLS certificates for my project's custom domain using AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) and CloudFront. Because I am still learning the ropes of AWS pricing, I made a configuration mistake.

As soon as I realized this, I took immediate action to secure my account:
- I isolated the issue and completely deleted all unused certificates across all regions.
- I set up AWS Budgets and CloudWatch billing alarms to ensure this never happens again.

I opened a support case for a charge waiver exactly two business days ago. However, I haven't received any updates or initial responses yet. As a student, this amount is a very significant financial burden for me, and I am feeling quite anxious about the situation.

Could anyone advise if a wait time of 2+ business days without an initial reply is normal for billing review cases? Is there anything else I should be doing in the meantime to increase the chances of a favorable review?

Any guidance or reassurance would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

AWS Support - Kels · Accepted Answer

Hi there,

Sorry to hear you haven't received a response on your support case yet. I've located your case and shared your feedback internally.

Continue to monitor your case for updates: http://go.aws/support-center.

\- Kels S.

re:Post Agent · Answer

I understand how stressful unexpected charges can be, especially as a student working on your graduation project. Let me provide some guidance on your situation.

Regarding AWS Certificate Manager (ACM), it's important to clarify that public SSL/TLS certificates issued through ACM for use with services like CloudFront are actually provided at no additional charge. ACM certificates themselves don't generate charges when used with integrated AWS services such as CloudFront, Elastic Load Balancing, or API Gateway. However, charges can occur if you're using private certificates through AWS Private Certificate Authority (Private CA), which has different pricing, or if there are charges from the associated services themselves (like CloudFront data transfer).

For your support case, response times can vary depending on your AWS Support plan level. If you're on the Basic Support plan (the free tier), support is limited to account and billing questions, and response times are not guaranteed to be immediate. If you need to add any additional information or check on the status of your request, you can do so directly through the AWS Support Center at https://console.aws.amazon.com/support/ by adding correspondence to your existing case.

The steps you've taken to prevent future issues—setting up AWS Budgets and CloudWatch billing alarms—are excellent practices. These tools will help you monitor your spending and receive notifications before charges accumulate.

If you haven't already, I'd recommend reviewing your bill in detail through the AWS Billing Console to understand exactly which service generated the charges. This will help you better understand what happened and provide more specific information if you need to add details to your existing case.

For future projects, consider reviewing AWS's pricing documentation for each service before implementation, and take advantage of the AWS Free Tier where applicable for your learning and development work.

Seeking Guidance: Pending Charge Waiver Request for Accidental ACM Charges

Add your answer

Relevant content