Anthropic Console Overcharged User 100x, Dev Says — SkimNews
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- R.S.G., a LegalTech attorney running a developer team from Costa Rica, attempted to load $5.04 in credits on Anthropic Console but was charged $504.00 — a 100x overcharge — when they typed "5.04" using local Spanish-region decimal conventions
- Anthropic's payment pipeline failed to sanitize the locale-formatted input or throw a validation error, instead silently stripping the decimal internally and executing the charge without a confirmation modal or final-amount review screen
- R.S.G. filed a complaint the same day, minutes after the charge, but was met only by an automated support bot that repeatedly denied the refund by citing generic policies, with no human review of the overcharge
- The user has initiated a chargeback through their Costa Rican bank, but those banking processes can take up to 120 days to resolve, leaving the $504 already deducted and forcing the user to front the cost of the engineering mistake
- R.S.G. warns the bug is systemic — the missing confirmation screen combined with locale mishandling means someone typing "50.00" could be instantly charged $5,000, putting any international developer on the platform at risk
Why it matters: Anthropic Console's missing input validation and lack of a payment confirmation screen create a systemic financial vulnerability for any international user whose locale formats decimals differently — and with no human escalation path and a 120-day Costa Rican chargeback timeline, affected developers bear the cash-flow burden of an engineering flaw in the meantime.
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