SHUT DOWN AWS ACCOUNT - Cannot figure out what I am being charged for - Please help?

Question

I've been learning AWS for about 6 months now, have learned to disable Cloudwatch metrics when I create Lambdas so I no longer get charged for those, but I started getting charged again starting Jan. 20 2022, $.03, then $.05 per day since for something according to Cost Explorer which adds up to $.43, but I currently show a bill for $.44.  I'm having trouble tracking down what exactly is causing the charge.  AWS Service Charges is where I see where I exceeded the 10 free alarms per month by 4.430 alarms and a charge of $.44.  When I click over to Cloudwatch, I see 16 alarms triggered on 12/20/2021-12/22/2021, but none after that...so I not connecting what I am being charged for...confused.  Those alarms were for DynamoDB read/write capacity maybe autoscaling I think?  There is a policy, that AWS will not let me disable, on my tables to allow Cloudwatch alarms, which is only getting triggered on 2 of my 5 tables, something that reads "ConsumedReadCapacityUnits < 150 for 15 datapoints within 15 minutes."  Not sure if this is the charge.  Can someone help me figure this out before I have to shutdown my AWS account for runaway spending?  Thanks.

Leeroy Hannigan · Accepted Answer

Hi,

To handle an issue regarding billing, we suggest that you reach out to our [Customer Service](https://aws.amazon.com/contact-us/) team who will happily assist you with your billing issue.

jfharper · Answer

Thank you, that was helpful. CS chatted with me, my problem was when I create a new DynamoDB Table, a new alarm gets automatically created....as time goes on, if the alarm exceeds the 10 free per month it will start showing a charge in Cost Explorer, thus the costs starting Jan 20, even though the 2 new tables where made in December. I need to remember to delete the alarm once I create a new table or it will keep firing past the 10 per month...or something like that. I still don't understand it entirely yet...maybe time will help with that.

Does anyone know why I had 14 alarms going even though I only made 2 tables? I'm not getting how/where the alarms are created with making a new table.

Does anyone know why I had 14 alarms going even though I only made 2 tables?  I'm not getting how/where the alarms are created with making a new table.

RootBeard · Answer

I'm having the same issue - started being charged last month for alarms going above the 10 limit for 4 empty DynamoDB tables created back in 2012 (so 12 years ago). I don't even remember what those tables are for, I'm guessing some tutorial I followed at some point. Haven't logged in into AWS in 3 years so I wonder what caused these alarms to start increasing all of a sudden.

SHUT DOWN AWS ACCOUNT - Cannot figure out what I am being charged for - Please help?

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