GoKawiilIn early March, I noticed approximately $180 in unexpected charges to my Anthropic account. I’m a Claude Max subscriber, and between March 3-5, I received 16 separate “Extra Usage” invoices ranging from $10-$13 each, all in quick succession of one another. However, I wasn’t using Claude. I was away from my laptop entirely and was out sailing with my parents back home in San Diego.
When I checked my usage dashboard, it showed my session at 100% despite no activity. My Claude Code session history showed two tiny sessions from March 5 totaling under 7KB (no sessions on March 3 or March 4.) Nothing that would explain $180 in Extra Usage charges.
This isn’t just me. Other Max plan users have reported the same issue. There are numerous GitHub issues about it (e.g. claude-code#29289 and claude-code#24727), and posts on r/ClaudeCode describing the exact same behavior: usage meters showing incorrect values and Extra Usage charges piling up erroneously.
The support experience
On March 7, I sent a detailed email to Anthropic support laying out the situation with all the evidence above. Within two minutes, I received a response… from “Fin AI Agent, Anthropic’s AI Agent.” The AI agent told me to go through an in-app refund request flow. Sadly, this refund pipeline is only applicable for subscriptions, and not for Extra Usage charges. I also wanted to confirm with a human on exactly what went wrong rather than just getting a refund and calling it a day.
So, naturally, I replied asking to speak to a human. The response:
Thank you for reaching out to Anthropic Support. We’ve received your request for assistance. While we review your request, you can visit our Help Center and API documentation for self-service troubleshooting. A member of our team will be with you as soon as we can.
That was March 7. I followed up on March 17. No response. I followed up again on March 25. No response. I followed up again today, April 8, over a month later. Still nothing.
The irony
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, and there is seemingly no human behind it. I don’t have a problem with AI-assisted support, though I do have a problem with AI-only support that serves as a wall between customers and anyone who can actually resolve their issue.