HN Explorer

Claude Account Suspended Seconds After Purchase?

70 points by AnthropicWHAT ↗ HN
I literally created a new account, pressed submit on the credit card dialog, the purchase goes through and i get logged out. I try to log in, and it says I'm banned. I check my mail box and I see an email with an invoice and another that I'm in violation of the ToS, submitted within the same minute LOL.

Is this some kind of joke? :O

25 comments

[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 41.9 ms ] thread
DiabloD3
Not surprised.

Anthropic dogfoods their own product, and, unfortunately, this is what their product produces sometimes.

godzillabrennus
Congratulations, you are part of the world's most advanced paid beta. So advanced that you ended up testing the fraud system unwittingly.
swader999
Kudos for going public with it. Likely the only way to get it resolved.
garyfirestorm
Are you located in a country that is sanctioned by the US?
lukewarm707
i know only this:

anthropic does not let you use their service if you are physically located in china

however, anthropic does not actually ban chinese people.

so, you can still use it provided you make your request from a 'democracee' country

HyperL0gi
I’ve heard that using a VPN might cause in a ban. Considering they probably use an LLM to determine if you're a bot or something, you got unlucky with a possibly Haiku 4.5 hallucination ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
bsenftner
The same thing happened to me. It's a fucking joke. Located in Denver.
Crystalin
We got the same issue. Some credit cards get automatically banned. We had to create another account (same info) but use a different credit card. (BTW: you will be charged even if they ban you)
foenix
I'm considering starting my own new thread about this, but I can't even unsubscribe or use my account without doing a Persona ID check -- something I absolutely refuse to do but have no way to opt out of.
saghm
Another A/B test that affects 2% of users, maybe?
hootz
Why is Anthropic fumbling so hard their boost they got from OpenAI fumbling hard? These companies suck... I'll stay with the open-weight models.
mixtureoftakes
anthropic really needs to just make a great, personalized customer support experience where you get a couple dollars worth of opus credits that has some authority and ability to help with your issue.

"it couldnt be that simple because xyz" why not? I'm yet to see any big ai company actually try this

seanhandley
There's so much model distillation and token reselling going on, I imagine they've enabled a lot of automated checks to keep bots out. Depending on where you are and who you bank with, you might struggle to get any kind of access.
OutOfHere
Anthropic has always had a wide variety of customer-disdain issues. When will people get it through their heads that Anthropic was meant to be a product for large enterprises, certainly not for individuals.
subhobroto
It seems Anthropic has taken an aggressive stance on their buffet, flat rate plans being used in any tool not created by them, where they immediately ban such accounts.

I believe they still allow API usage in this manner though.

In this case, the OP attempted to use Zed with Anthropic's $20/mo plan and was banned immediately. I imagine if they had went the API usage route, this wouldn't have transpired.

Surprisingly, I wonder if this will push more people to use Cursor because they allow you to use a variety of models, including SOTA. That, or manage your own API key subscriptions with a middleware like LiteLLM that also monitors usage so that your coding frenzy doesn't turn into a $20k bill. Or maybe OpenRouter where you manually top up the account.

flowghost_24
Something similar happened with me a couple of days ago, but I submitted a request through email, their AI responded back even before the 3 second mark. Mine was an API vs ClaudeCode issue it tangles the account sometimes. Got fixed in a few.
0xCE0
Anthropic user account system seems dangerous to begin with. Login only with email, which cannot be changed ("make new account if your email changes"). I have have monthly Pro plan which I cancelled immediately to avoid situation where banning leaves billing. Now they have changed so that I can't resubscribe monthly plan anymore (I have ~10 days left of previous subscription), only yearly billing is option for resubscription at this moment (and yearly commitment is a long time with AI models). When the subscription ends, we'll see what it is shows then... You can't trust these kind of businesses...
Sasha_2040
I had the same error that I'm violating ToS after payment but not for the new account, for account I used for half a year, but it seems it was some kind of error from Anthropik side, I just tested my cloude cli, it was working fine and I did nothing. Not sure your case the same but they have definetely buggy system
rjbriody
similar here :(

I've been waiting on human support for over a month wrt a failed $1200 max pro purchase.

the automated support is blatantly wrong and repeatedly suggests things that aren't real options.

no human contact. not even an ack. $1200 just "lost in the slop".

I'll probably have to dispute via credit card.

josefritzishere
Not only is AI terrible, but it's administrated poorly.
unsnap_biceps
I had the same thing happen. I use Claude at work, and I wanted to use it at home. I created a new account and purchased the year long subscription, got confirmed and then banned. I emailed a few times and ended up doing a charge back and presume I'm blacklisted from them forever now.

No VPN, zero tokens used, just new account, purchase year plan and immediate ban.

slowmovintarget
Green account.

Some possible reasons:

- Something in your account information matched an SDN list (or some other country's equivalent list)

- They did not apply proper geofencing before sign-up. (bug)

- The card you used or their payment provider flagged the activity as fraudulent (for a number of reasons).

- Your user account showed impossible travel (VPN hopping, your account was compromised as you created it...)

- There's a bug in their system that attributed someone else's prompts with your account.

- Their detection of Claude Code harness subscription abuse got tripped (bug).

- ...

Appeal or dispute the charges with the card.