I used a Visa card to buy monthly Pro subscription. One day I ran out of credits so I go to buy extra credit. But my card got declined. I recheck my card limit and try again. Still declined.

I try extending the Pro subscription. It works. Turns out my card had a "Secure by Visa" feature. To complete transaction I needed to submit OTP on a Visa page. This page appears when I pay for Pro but not while buying extra credits.

I open a ticket and mention all the details to Claude support. Even these details they come back with "We have no way of knowing why your card was declined. You need to check with your bank".

Later I get hold of a Mastercard with similar protection. OTP triggers on both subscription and extra usage page.

I share the finding and response is still - "We checked with our engineering team and we have no way of knowing why the other Visa card was declined. You have to check with your bank".

I gave up trying to buy extra usage.

My experience with Replicate has also similarly absurd. For testing I loaded $10 to my balance. But I keep getting rate limited with error that my balance should be above $5. Responses have been absurd. AI bot responded that my balance had to be above $10. On asking why the message said $5 the "human" support responded that it might be a "temporary hiccup". Later they came back that my balance had to be above $20 for full rate limits. I asked again - why was their rate limit error message not clear enough? No response for past 10 days.

Its like all these AI companies want to replace developers but their own systems is built using super glue.

It took like 40 minutes and worked like this:

1. Sign in to the site, get the onboarding screen, download clients.

2. Run a client, it triggers an email with a link to open on the site so i can authenticate it.

3. Instead of authenticating the client, the site sends me to the onboarding screen again.

4-20: repeat the above loop

21. finally get a code I can paste into the client.

I'm sure someone at Anthropic posted a blog entry with how fast they vibe coded the authentication code. Back before they claimed to have vibe coded a compiler that can do a linux kernel.

Not to mention their 1 9s availability (I am not joking, check for yourself).

Insert victims of their own success cliche here.

The kicker? When you get downgraded to the Free tier, they don't offer any support beyond the AI bot. You have to go through some hoops to get it to open a support ticket to maybe talk to a human in 4-5 weeks. Unbelievable.

We're meant to trust Anthropic enough to replace all of our engineers by their model for writing our software but somehow they don't trust it enough to let it handle simple customer support decisions. But shhhh, it's voluntarily nerfed just slightly bellow ASI for our safety.

Every conference talk on this stuff seems to suggest that we're all way behind the curve on AI implementation, but I suspect its mostly smoke and mirrors and mechanical turks. My company invests heavily in automated IVR and chat responses and we still optimize for getting the customer to a real agent. Those agents are largely overseas BPOs, but at least that's better than an AI loop that gets you nowhere.

Raised with support immediately, after being told a human would look at it I've not been able to get anything further.

I even tried to open a new account, but it was immediately disabled as well.No refund, no explain.Disappointed with Anthropic. I've started using codex now, and it works great without any of these weird issues.It was absolutely terrible being vendor lock-in state, happy that I finally have the freedom to choose now tho it is painful to reset all the workflow. Would recommend anyone who is frustrated by this incompetent company should immediately switch to their competitors' products.

I realize the company barely has time to cash checks, but failing to handle small fry reasonable charge disputes should be handled appropriately.

    > Anthropic is an AI company that builds one of the most capable AI assistants in the world. Their support system is a Fin AI chatbot that can’t actually help you.

If the progenitors with functionally infinite tokens can't get this basic stuff right, everything else they are doing is just blowing smoke. I don't care if you can ship a kernel compiler or a janky "browser"; how about just make your software work? The smartest guys in this space, engineers making 7 figures in TC, with billions in capital, unlimited tokens, and access to the best models cannot make a simple customer support chatbot work.

But you! You're expected to deliver that customer support agent that's going to allow them to cut 500 people from payroll. You'll have it by Monday, right?

It's some Tai Lopez "Here in my garage" energy.

Let that sink in.

so far for this month "$81.07 spent (Resets May 1)" just 8 days. For basic web-based conversations, accumulating $81 in overage charges within three days(April 5, April 6, April 7) is unreasonable.

My god. Anthropic has done it. Those crazy bastards have gone ahead and done it!

They've achieved AGI for customer service. It's just like the real thing!

They wouldn't be able to tell you. The entire back end system is probaby vibe-coded and nobody really understands what it does.

Their chatbot accepted the request, I was downgraded to the free plan immediately, and since then I have been waiting for the money.

Claude Code Exploit: Claude Code Becomes an Unwitting Executor https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues/45951

that's the single reason I am no longer a customer. I don't feel like shoveling money at non-communicating phantoms.

4 hours of credit wasn't by any means worth the time, what irked me was the casual disregard for lost customer value.

I sent them some feedbacks one some issues, actually good ideas, and I didnt get any response so far.

Most people who commit wire fraud weren't socially bullied and criticized enough before their professional positions to keep in line legally. Useless failures.

Also an issue with scale - for example, Google having similar issues of not handling small, isolated cases.

Hope you get your money back!

This inability to reach and/or get things resolved through customer support channels seems endemic, and probably generally part of the enshittification trend as a whole.

It forwarded my request which was then answered by an open claw agent :/

Still waiting for a response two weeks later.

You're too kind for the company trying to steal from you - whether intentionally or by negligence, doesn't really matter.

Or the small claims court mentioned by someone else. Make sure to add your time and the cost of the representation.

I'm fairly sure their billing backend is vibe-coded and their support is worse than Google's.

The other day Dario and Co, were looking at a robotic lamp that does your laundry and folds your clothes. He cares more about investing in that than your billing issue.

To them, they see us as gambling addicts, whilst we pay them their overpriced credits at their casino.

The house (Anthropic) always wins.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47679322

I responded to the last one with "This account was canceled. If you persist in this harassment, I will open a case with the NYSAG."