Tell HN: My Amazon EC2 billing problems

I had small Amazon EC2 instance running for almost 3 years. I stopped it 3 months ago and currently have some data on Amazon S3 I had no time to delete.

Couple of days ago I received email from Amazon that they could not bill my credit card in order to collect 10 cents for the S3 data. I logged into my account to see what going on and for the first time in my life I saw this message:

"You have 7 charges past due. Please pay the amount in full to avoid suspension or termination of your AWS Account." "Select past charges and pay now"

So I clicked that and to my surprise I saw this:

"Please pay the amount in full to avoid suspension or termination of your AWS account"

  Billing Period, Bill Details,  You owe
  June 1, 2009 - June 30, 2009, Bill Details, $ 92.14
  April 1, 2009 - April 30, 2009, Bill Details, $ 90.12
  January 1, 2009 - January 31, 2009, Bill Details, $ 91.57
  November 1, 2008 - November 30, 2008, Bill Details, $ 87.24
  August 1, 2008 - August 31, 2008, Bill Details, $ 93.78
  April 1, 2008 - April 30, 2008, Bill Details, $ 88.49
  February 1, 2008 - February 29, 2008, Bill Details, $ 83.92

Total Amount You Owe $627.26 Amount You Selected to Pay $627.26

They did not billed me for February 2008 ?!? 2008! And the total I owe them is $627.

I ofter receive messages from Amazon that they could not bill my credit card. This is because I don't use credit card but debit card for online payments. Every time I need to make a payment I go to the bank (which is nearby) and put some money into my account. I do this because: 1) Bank is nearby and this way I don't have to worry about stolen card details, etc 2) I have to think twice before buying something big online: first - when I put the money on my account, and second - when I make the real payment

I just spent an hour filtering the online billing records on my card for the past three years and it seems according to the records that Amazon is right - they did not billed me, according to my card records. I have difficult time figuring out how this could happened, since AWS billing is a monthly routine for me. Every month when I receive their warning email I go to the bank put enough money into my account and then stopped receiving warning emails from them.

HN moment: I have read somewhere on HN, or on HN linked story long time ago that you can have one month past due before they cut you off. And I am sure it was from some CEO of famous startup company, who was explaining how you can play with startup finances by delaying your payments to Amazon with a month (or this is how I understand it at the time).

I will talk to my bank on Monday to see if they can provide my with paper billing details regrading Amazon and will probably pay, but I think it is not good business practice to bill your clients 30 months later.

Have you ever been more than a month late on AWS billing. What happened? What will your advice be in this situation?