Anthropic has confirmed a billing error after a South Korean user of its Claude AI platform received payment requests totaling more than $16.6 million despite claiming to have no billable API usage and no payment method linked to the account. The incident has sparked discussion around automated billing systems and customer support procedures after the user shared details of the case online.
According to the user, the first invoice arrived on July 7 and requested a payment of $1,669,875.90. Less than 24 hours later, a second invoice increased the amount to $16,627,739.70, nearly ten times higher than the original demand. The user initially believed the messages were part of a phishing campaign because of the unusually large figures involved. However, he later determined that the emails originated from Anthropic’s official billing system and contained links associated with the company’s legitimate Stripe payment infrastructure. Stripe provides payment, invoicing, and billing services for Anthropic. The user stated that he was subscribed to Claude’s free plan, had no payment method registered on the account, and that his dashboard showed zero API activity. Despite this, screenshots reportedly showed two attempted overseas transactions from a United States merchant identified as Anthropic. Both payment attempts were declined by the bank because they exceeded the transaction limit, and no money was transferred.
Anthropic later informed the user that the incident had been caused by an incorrect automatic credit reload setting that generated invalid payment requests. According to the company, the problematic setting was disabled as a precaution and the account’s billing configuration was restored. Anthropic also clarified that the issue was not the result of unauthorized access or a security breach. The company confirmed that its payment processor had attempted to collect the invalid amount, but the transaction was rejected and the user did not owe any money. However, Anthropic has not publicly disclosed how the automatic reload value reached more than $16 million or what specific circumstances triggered the error.
The user said he spent four days attempting to obtain written confirmation that the invoices had been cancelled and his account had been cleared. According to his account of the incident, he sent approximately 18 emails to Anthropic and repeatedly received automated responses before reaching a human support representative. He also stated that the attempted transactions resulted in his primary bank card being blocked, causing additional inconvenience. The user criticized the company’s handling of the case, arguing that an invoice involving such a significant amount should have prompted a faster response. Anthropic’s public service status page did not list any billing related incident on July 7 or July 8, although it did record several technical issues affecting Claude services during the same period. The incident has raised broader concerns about automated billing controls and the potential consequences of system errors, particularly when payment requests do not align with a customer’s account activity or usage records.
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