Found 3 possible duplicate issues:

1. [BUG] Literal "HERMES.md" in git commit messages triggers 400 "out of extra usage" on Max OAuth (content filter false-positive misclassified as quota error) #53171
2. [BUG] CLI completely blocked by "out of extra usage" error despite Max 20x plan at only 10% usage #45020
3. Billing bug: Extra usage pool consumed while session limit still has remaining capacity #29704

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Thank you for reaching out about a refund. I understand you've encountered a billing issue where requests were incorrectly routed to extra usage instead of your Max 20x plan quota due to the presence of "HERMES.md" in git commit messages.
Let me look up your account information to help process your refund request.

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. We are consistently working on improvements to our infrastructure to better handle these types of issues and prevent similar problems from happening in the future.
Thank you for your patience and for taking the time to document this issue so thoroughly. Your detailed reproduction steps will be valuable for our engineering team.

Thanks for the report! This was an overactive anti-abuse system. Fixed.

You are welcome! Can I get my refund now.

Refund the guy, it’s really drop in the ocean, but would look good.

Refunding him would be the easiest PR win in the world. Just sayin

He is owed a refund.

@sasha-id This is ridiculous. You admit it's Anthropics' fault, yet you refuse to refund him?
Makes me rethink my choice of using Claude.

A skeptical observer might believe that the overactive anti-abuse bug was triggered by more than just the reported "HERMES.md" string, and has collectively cost Anthropics customers millions.
The refusal to refund might be based on them not wanting to set an expensive precedent.

Let's hope this theory is proven wrong and that they do right by their customer(s).

Note that per @bcherny ‘s report of this being an overactive anti-abuse system, they consider some “abuse” something that they are just going to extra usage bill you for. Is it servicing a customer for money, or is it abuse? Abuse should be blocked, not upcharged.

If there exists a mode for an anti-abuse system to bypass your quotas and fulfill your requests (but with an upcharge) then the “anti-abuse” system is functioning in bad faith by design.

The alleged abuse is owning the client. If you try to own the code that runs on your computer you're in breach.

It's hilarious to me because it's literally saying that using an agent to act act in your stead is a special of breach of trust -- in other words, they DO NOT BELIEVE YOU HAVE A RIGHT TO DELEGATE YOUR AGENCY TO... A SOFTWARE AGENT.

For a company that claims to sell personal agents (that act using your agency) it's pretty fuckin' great

Of course in public their message is the opposite, publicly they say that person+agent should get the red carpet roll out from everyone.

Hypocrites.

I'll just note that Chinese open weight models can be hosted on your local hardware (if you have the hardware to run them) and they cost 10-50 times less while being around 2.7% worse than Anthropic models at coding (as if the latter fact actually matters.)

Have a nice day, Anthropic.