Hey everybody, how's it going? Hope
you're having a lovely day. Welcome to
today's episode of How You're Getting
[ __ ] I'm your host, Lewis Rossman.
One of the things I want to go over
today is a strategy for anybody who has
been screwed with by this particular
move by Anthropic. Anthropic makes
Claude AI that a lot of people use
because they have a really nice harness
for claude code. It just for a lot of
people, the reason they enjoy it is it
just works. I've noticed that Gemini has
the most information on certain things,
particularly when it comes to how Google
search engine optimization rankings and
algorithms work. But when it comes to
actually having an agentic workflow that
just produces something that works,
cloud code is surprisingly good. And I
think that they are they are realizing
this and that they're realizing that
they have a certain market advantage
there and they and as people were
flocking to claude code, they started us
they they started doing this [ __ ] that I
just find to be kind of sloppy and
underhanded. So in order to explain
this, I want to try and make an analogy
to something that more of you will
understand if you don't use AI
regularly. Let's say that your internet
service provider charges you $100 a
month and you've got 100 gigabytes a
month of data, but after you go over 100
gigabytes a month, they start charging
you $10 a gigabyte. Now, let's say that
you have used 70 gigabytes of your 100
gigabyte quota for the month. But once
you start using Bit Torrent, they start
billing you $10 a gigabyte even though
you've only used up 70 gigabytes of your
100 gigabyte quota. And let's say that
they don't even [ __ ] tell you that
that's why they're doing it. It's only
happening when you use Bit Torrent
because they associate Bit Torrent with
piracy. And let's say you're not even
pirating something. Let's say you're
using Bit Torrent to download a Linux
ISO, but you're still getting build $10
a gigabyte even though you've only used
up 70 GB of your 100 GB quota. This is
something that Claude Code has been
doing if you have certain types of files
in your directory and they're just
telling you, "Yeah, it may have been an
error. We don't care." So, there are
people that like Claude, but they also
like using their Claude account with
other frameworks where it just may work
better for their particular use case
than Claude's own harness. Some people
may want to use it with openclaw and
other things. And if people who do that
tend to have certain files in their
directory. So in this case, this
gentleman is talking about how if he has
a file called Hermes.md
in the directory, instead of being part
of his plan, it'll start going what's
called extra usage. Now, if you have a
Claude Max plan, you pay $200 a month
and you're supposed to get a [ __ ] ton of
usage. But once you run out of usage for
a particular time period, the way it
works is it'll stop working. But you
have the option to use something called
extra usage. And when you start using
extra usage, you get build an additional
rate, but you're able to continue your
project without being interrupted. And
what he noticed is that if he had
hermes.md as a file in a directory
written with capital Hmees and then MD
for markdown as an extension, that even
if he still had usage left in his
account, even if he was only 70 or 80%
the way there, it would start billing
him for extra usage even though the
usage was already there. Now, I may
consent to having extra usage in my
account. It'll ask you if you want to
consent, but that's also under the
understanding that you're not going to
start billing me at this penalty rate
unless I used up all my usage. And he
noticed in this case, the only time this
was happening is if I had this written
in there. And that's only going to be
written in there usually if again, but
this is slippery, but they're assuming
that the people that have this there are
people that are using clawed outside of
their harness. And the people that are
using it outside of their harness, they
really want to push to API billing. API
billing is where instead of paying $200
a month as a flat rate to get this
amount of usage, you're paying every
single time you make a query based on
how many tokens you're using. And TLDDR,
that's way more expensive. The reason
that I have a problem with this is if
they said upfront, by the way, just so
you know, because we see this file in
your directory, we are going to start
billing you at the higher rate
immediately rather than actually
allowing you to use the usage that you
have for $200 a month. That would be one
thing, but they just silently took his
money and the response that Claude gave
was disgusting. They said the following.
I sincerely apologize for the disruption
you experienced with the billing routing
issue. We take service reliability very
seriously. However, I need to let you
know that we are unable to issue
compensation for degraded service or
technical errors that result in
incorrect billing routing. That last
sentence over there, I need to let you
know that we're unable to compensate you
for technical errors that resulted in
you being build improperly.
That's fraud in my opinion. And uh the
way that I would respond to this and the
way that I would suggest that all of you
do instead of simply filing a technical
query or a technical support ticket with
Anthropic, file a chargeback and then do
the ticket. And I'm I'm trying to come
at this from the business owner
perspective is what would get me most
likely to change the way my behavior is.
And that's a chargeback. There's a few
reasons for it. So when there's a
chargeback, I have to respond to it with
my argument. Regardless of what the
end-user license agreement says, the
person that's dealing with a chargeback
is usually an underpaid customer support
employee. And that person, it may
surprise a lot of you, but the person
that's doing that is usually the
underdog themselves in their personal
life. The person that deals with
chargebacks at Visa and Mastercard and
Discover and Amex is not somebody that
makes $250,000 a year. They are not the
Epstein class. They are not somebody who
is looking to punch down on the little
guy. Very often, it's the exact
opposite. In my experience, they very
often, even as a small business, even
when I have all my information correct
and I can very clearly show this
customer is just trying to milk us, they
will find in favor of the customer.
Sometimes that maybe because they just
fundamentally don't understand the
industry. At other times, it's just
because again, like if I'm getting paid,
you know, [ __ ] $7 an hour, like I
give a [ __ ] to defend the trillion
dollar company. So, here's what I'm
suggesting to all of you. Instead of
simply filing a ticket with Anthropic,
the best way to teach them a lesson is
to file a chargeback prior to filing
that ticket with Anthropic for a few
reasons. Number one, it creates
friction. Instead of just sending this
canned response, they don't have to log
into their billing system and log in
there and have somebody manually create
an argument, manually respond to your
complaints. If they do a canned response
over and over again, the person on the
other end is going to start to notice a
pattern here and go, "Yeah, you know
what? [ __ ] that. No." And more
importantly, if a company gets enough
complaints, a lot of the times the
merchant services provider will be open
to just dropping them. And this this
comes up as part of the the automated
way that many of these business
companies do business where if they see
that there is a certain rate of credit
card transactions to chargebacks, they
just say this is not worth the money for
us because it actually costs them money
in order to process all of these
chargebacks. And businesses will respond
to this by doing whatever they need to
do to not get that charge back. I don't
think enough people understand this. And
I know that there was a lot of friction
in the chargeback process itself. For
instance, if you're unfortunate enough
to use Chase Bank, when you click report
a problem, sometimes it works and
sometimes it'll tell you you must call
this number. And when you call this
number, you are routed to somebody who
is reading off of a script and life is
miserable. I know it sucks for you may
have a good credit card provider, you
may have a horrible one, you may not
know how to do a chargeback. Just trust
me on this. If enough of you stick
together, band together, and file a
chargeback on anthropic, they will be
forced to to stop doing this. And they
will learn a lesson from it. I guarantee
you, you can't do this. You can't admit
in writing that your billing system
failed and charged people more money.
And here's the thing I've noticed about
these bugs. Every time one of these bugs
like this comes out, it tends to be in
the direction of you paying more money
if they suspect that you're using
something outside of their ecosystem. If
you want people to use API billing, just
make it not work. Like, just say this
tool doesn't work. Just return an empty
query. Just return what happens when you
hit a limit. This is sneaky [ __ ] What
you're trying to say, oh, you have this
file there. That file there, well, maybe
it makes me think you're using something
you're not supposed to use, so I'm just
going, no, [ __ ] that. That that, in my
opinion, that is [ __ ] [ __ ] And the way
you respond to [ __ ] [ __ ] is by filing
chargebacks in mass. If you do that, I
think you'll get the result that you're
looking for. That's it for today. And as
always, I hope you learned something.
And I really hope that you'll put in the
time to go to your credit card company's
website, file that charge back in mass,
and get them to change their policy
because this this is [ __ ] That's
not how you respond to people. I can't
respond to somebody and literally say
that we [ __ ] build you improperly,
but I can't refund you for our technical
error that builds you improperly. Suck
it. And you may say that's in the end
user license agreement or the terms of
service. Okay, let's turn that around on
you. Now you got to trust somebody that
makes three or five dollars an hour that
they outsource the chargeback process to
in Indonesia or Vietnam or something to
read that [ __ ] 200page terms of
service. Best of luck with that. I'll
see you in the next video. Bye now.