Anthropic Bug Drains $200 from User, Refund Refused
A bizarre Anthropic Claude Code billing bug has sparked outrage in the developer community after a user reported losing $200 to erroneous charges and then being denied a refund.
The issue, filed on April 25, 2026, on the official Claude Code GitHub repository, reveals a startling flaw: when a git repository’s recent commit history contained the case-sensitive string HERMES.md, Claude Code silently rerouted API requests to “extra usage” billing rather than the user’s included Max 20x plan quota. The affected user, running Claude Code v2.1.119 on macOS with a $200/month Max plan, watched $200.98 drain from their extra usage credits while their plan dashboard still showed 86% weekly capacity remaining.
A Bug Hidden in Plain Sight
The reporter discovered the trigger only after a painstaking binary search through commit messages. Lowercase hermes.md worked fine. HERMES.txt worked fine. Only the exact string HERMES.md in a commit message caused the routing failure not even a file by that name on disk.
Anthropic engineer bcherny confirmed the bug was real and has since been fixed. However, the company’s support response, which multiple Hacker News commenters noted appeared to be AI-generated, stated it was “unable to issue compensation for degraded service or technical errors that result in incorrect billing routing.”
The Anthropic Claude Code billing bug response drew immediate backlash. Users on Hacker News called the policy unprecedented, with one commenter noting they had never seen a legitimate business refuse refunds for its own technical errors. At least one self-identified Anthropic employee anonymously confirmed the support reply had been generated by Claude itself.
Several other users chimed in with similar billing complaints, with some saying they ultimately resolved the issue through credit card chargebacks. The incident has intensified growing concerns about Anthropic’s customer service practices and whether its billing infrastructure being adequately monitored by humans.
