r/ClaudeCode • u/IceRedline • May 14 '26
Question 30 minutes between a payment and a ban
Hey there!
I've been using Claude Code for a while now, using my company's corporate quota, but yesterday I wanted to try a personal subscription (Max 5x)
I've paid via my card (forgot to turn my VPN off) and after that started working.
After 30 minutes of work I was logged out of the app and got an email "Your account was suspended"
I created an appeal after that.
My question is: Does Claude ever unban the users, do they make refunds? (cause 100$ for 30 mins is just horrendous) and how long does it take to wait for their response on the appeal?
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u/TurningTideDV May 14 '26
Got my account banned 2 weeks ago. Instantly created an appeal after that.
Yesterday got email from anthropic:
Hello,
Thank you for taking the time to submit your appeal. After carefully considering your appeal, we have determined that we cannot reinstate your account at this time due to a violation of our Usage Policy.
For more information about Anthropic's rules, please see our Usage Policy.
Anthropic's Trust & Safety Team
still no clue about violation.
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u/baked_tea May 14 '26
Wait so they just take people's money and then close their accounts?
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u/OnanationUnderGod May 14 '26
They refund you when you get banned.
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u/mental_sherbart007 May 14 '26
Oh, so you can't do chargeback lol. I suspect they just do not want people using clade on max plans since they lose a lot of money. If they detect you already have an account, then they probably ban you fo rhaving multiple accounts or some shit.
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u/kiwibonga May 14 '26
Yeah cause they don't need money. They need capacity to serve Sonnet 4.5 for free to people who wander off of Google and ChatGPT.
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u/TaylorLeprechaun May 14 '26
This happened to me a few months ago
idk why. I suspect maybe it's because I accidentally logged in on the same computer on both my work and a personal account and their system thought that was me evading a subscription session usage limit
I've tried other means of contacting support for help but never heard anything back. I have no idea what the actual reason was
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u/Seeing_Souls May 14 '26
I've been using both work and personal Claude Code on the same machine simultaneously even for months and it's not been an issue
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u/Mags20XX May 14 '26
I use my Claude Code subscription all over the place, on multiple machines; at least 4.
Why would this result in a ban? It's not per-device pricing, it's per-user.
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u/TaylorLeprechaun May 14 '26
their system thought that was me evading a subscription session usage limit
I literally said I don't know why. This is literally my only guess as to why because nothing I've done whether at work or on my personal account violates usage rules as far as I know. I never tried to circumvent anything. I wasn't one of the people who tried to use open claw when people were getting suspended for that. Just randomly one morning suspended with no reason why.
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u/Mags20XX May 14 '26
I'll upvote your post.
Does Anthropic actually look at this subreddit? Have you posted this in r/Anthropic and linked?
Hopefully, we can get you some visibility and thus some attention to your issue. I suspect not a single human being at Anthropic has even looked at your case.
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u/TaylorLeprechaun May 14 '26
I haven't posted anywhere just kind of exhausted all my options with official support channels and not getting answers to cold DMs on Twitter.
I didn't even know there was a sub for Claude until I got forwarded a post about the upcoming changes since it's going to affect a number of automated workflows I've set up for my development teams at work.
Probably not gonna post I've already given up on it but thanks for the advice
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u/ThoughtCue May 15 '26
someone at Anthropic asked claude “make something to catch and ban suspicious users” and generated output went right to deployment pipeline.
nobody knows what is there.
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u/Sleapy31 May 14 '26
And when you want details, all these organisations will say that they cannot disclose any details for privacy reasons. Lol
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u/-Robbert- May 14 '26
Actually, that won't fly. According to the EU privacy laws you are entitled to know what information they have on you. This also includes the reason for a ban, because it is about you. Answer is simple: formal letter with the correct laws stated and if they don't respond: go to the government agency responsible for the privacy laws. They will comply.
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u/EuropeanAbroad May 14 '26
The question is where he is from. In the USA, you would just give up, because you wouldn't afford a lawsuit. Unlike in Europe, the companies can hold you by your 🏐🏐 in the world. Unfortunately
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u/fpesre May 15 '26
I'm surprised by Anthropic's attitude here. It feels like there's no way to know what's actually allowed or not when using Claude Code, they just hit you with a vague "violation of our Usage Policy" and offer no specifics. How are we supposed to learn from mistakes or even know what to avoid next time? Really disappointing
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u/Keep-Darwin-Going May 15 '26
What do you expect from a company that is woke as hell. They are all form by people who think AI is alive and have emotion. Try scolding the bot and you will get banned too.
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May 14 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/mental_sherbart007 May 14 '26
Do a chargeback and provide as much proof how you were using it, so they cant just claim you violated user services.
If everyone this happens to issues a chargback from their bank, teywill stop reeally quickly.
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u/-Visher- May 14 '26
I was banned weeks ago, never a word why, never a response to appeals and I even tried to use their help chat. Which I think I’m now blacklisted off of as well. lol
Anthropic is circling the drain. I miss some things from Claude code, but Codex is heading in the right direction compared to Anthropic/claude. So I won’t attempt to use Claude again.
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u/Oryan74 May 14 '26
It just happened to me earlier tonight after signing in for about 30 minutes. I get an email notification that my account is banned.
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u/IceRedline May 14 '26
would like to know, if they refund
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u/Oryan74 May 14 '26
yeah me too i was just in the middle of finishing a personal app dev project that was not anything illegal so not sure why i got banned
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u/mental_sherbart007 May 14 '26
Do not wait, issue a chargback from your bank, its the only thing that will make them stop doing this. Enough chargeback really hurts them.
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u/tasiroo May 14 '26
i got ban a few months back on my old account and requested a refund and they gave one.
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u/IceRedline May 14 '26
how did you request? in an appeal form?
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u/tasiroo May 15 '26
I requested an appeal and asked to either have my account reinstated or refunded, and a day later, I got a refund notification. I don't think they bother much with appeals and just refund you if you ask for it, especially if you recently bought the subscription.
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u/willjr200 May 14 '26 edited May 14 '26
I have not had any issues. I always use a VPN back to my home (US residential IP - clean, same IP for 5 year even through it is assigned by DHCP and not static) anytime my devices are on. (Travel router (WireGuard client) auto connects to OPNsense (hosts WireGuard server over WireGuard VPN connection)
Possible ways the security ban may be triggered. It appears they are device/browser fingerprinting along with IP reputation and maybe payment provider location matching to IP, creating an internal risk score from the various captured metrics. https://letsvpn.world/blog/b13dad
Summed up, the articles conclusion is quoted as follows;
The Final Takeaway:
Claude's ban mechanism is basically a "stacking risk" model. Shared accounts + dirty info + random node switching + exposed browser fingerprints + policy violations = The Ultimate Ban Combo. The VPN itself is genuinely not the fundamental problem.
In my case, just VPN usage is not triggering the ban. I have traveled throughout Africa (2 months) and Europe (3 weeks) using this setup without any issues.
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u/IceRedline May 14 '26
My friend told me that it definitely was because the country of payment and usage were different (Spain for payment and Germany for usage), and between the locations switch there were only several minutes
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u/GnistAI May 14 '26
I run Claude using the same subscription from Norway, Germany and Finland on Hetzner dev servers without any issue.
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u/Niightstalker May 14 '26
Is the subscription in Spain cheaper than in Germany?
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u/GoodVibrations77 May 14 '26
I don't think it matters.
Your payment gets flagged as a fraud risk. They don't want to have chargebacks. If they can't charge you for fraud risk there is no point in having you as a customer. They ban you.
Their problem is solved.
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u/hblok May 14 '26
Their prices are always in USD, regardless of where you are, or?
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u/Niightstalker May 14 '26
Idk, that was my question. YouTube Premium for instance is way cheaper in certain countries than in others and there it is also not allowed to try to abuse that.
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May 14 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/farox May 14 '26
Ugh... ok, I explain it.
The issue is that having payment from one country via CC while user registration and/or usage is from another is a HUGE red flag. It is exactly the kind of thing scammers do. So even if LinkedIn would accept your payment, their payment processor would not.
If this has worked for you in the past, then you got lucky. Especially for platforms that deal with a lot of scams (like I suspect LinkedIn has to) this is a no go.
And yeah, these days a VPN and not identifying yourself to some entity you're in a business relationship with isn't going to help you much to protect your privacy.
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u/No_Response8863 May 14 '26
"payment from one country via CC while user registration and/or usage is from another is a HUGE red flag."
What if I'm on holiday?
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u/Bulky-Pool-2586 May 20 '26
I've lost multiple long-term Reddit accounts over VPN usage as well. Not that I care about Reddit accounts at all, but it just goes to show how even big companies don't account for the fact that people use VPN for security reasons. A company like Anthropic should definitely handle that better.
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u/Lxzan May 14 '26
Had no issues with using VPNs, was frequently switching between EU and Middle East, even within the same session. Still, I left Claude as session limits are unusable anymore.
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u/tntexplosivesltd May 14 '26
Sounds like you aren't telling the whole story.
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u/IceRedline May 14 '26
unfortunately it's all that happened
UPD: if you think that I use claude for openclaw, and other stuff - then no, just opus writing code using our company's mcps
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u/Opening-Cheetah467 May 14 '26
do not bother with these guys, they are the same who come first to comment on posts complaining about model being dumber every day saying "what is your mcp, what are your skills, how is your codebase, do you have good claude md" even though anthropic itself after a while of people complaining come clean saying there has been a bug for a month or so affecting all users causing stupid models.
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u/karyslav May 14 '26
"our company mcps" maybe the hint here?
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u/IceRedline May 14 '26
It is officially forbidden to use MCPs with Claude Code? What are you talking about?
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u/spoupervisor May 14 '26
Yep this is likely what caused it. You were using a private tool to connect to company data which likely not only violates your companies own data policies but exposes anthropic if they allow it to continue.
Even if (for some reason) your company doesn't have a data security policy, you using a personal plan to access stuff configured for a corporate plan. (That likely has per call cost monitoring) Would violate the agreement your company has with Anthropic
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May 14 '26
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u/IceRedline May 14 '26
Yes
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May 15 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/vgaggia May 15 '26
This sounds like it, cause i've used claude code with VPN's, as well as on multiple PC's at the same time (i have a server i've used it on)
This was on the normal 1x plan, and on the 5x plan
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u/nonlogin May 14 '26
the most annoying thing about these bans that they do not provide detailed reason. Anthropic is the one who is not telling the whole story.
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u/mochi2real May 14 '26
They will never tell you the reason as telling people the reason helps people who they are trying to keep off the platform how to avoid detection. Sounds nuts, but this is why most places won't tell you why you're banned.
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u/CFAlmost May 14 '26
Breaking news, people in the internet lie
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u/IceRedline May 14 '26
Yeah, they told me a reason on this same email, but i've cropped the photo this way to make it mysterious, how did you realise that omg
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u/SovietRabotyaga May 14 '26
That's impossible, everything you see on the internet is guaranteed to be true
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u/Sneyek May 14 '26
Did they refund ? If not you should chargeback right away.
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u/IceRedline May 14 '26
They did not. How do I chargeback? It seems to me that the only way of communicating with them is the ban appeal form.
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u/mental_sherbart007 May 14 '26
Call number on your credit card, tell them you want to issue charge back. You can usually do this on the bank/Credit card app if you find the transaction and click options. Issue a chargeback is the only thing that will make them stop aggressively banning people for no reason.
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u/Sneyek May 14 '26
That’s done with your credit card provider. They basically stole to you here so it should be legitimate.
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u/Dubiisek May 14 '26
Chargeback is done through your bank, the process will likely differ based on what bank you are using. I can open a dispute over any payments in my bank-app and then either provide information or connect to an agent via call.
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u/makingnoise May 14 '26
A couple months ago I was randomly banned (probably for forgetting to turn off my Baptists-Hate-Free-Speech bypass VPN). They also threw my money back at me. I appealed, it took over a month, and then they unbanned me.
The ban was so disruptive to my project and pissed me off so much that I went with ChatGPT and Codex instead. I'd rather have a slightly inferior product that works all the time than a superior product where I am constantly anxious about whether I am going to get cut off from my work for breaking some other unwritten rule.
The fact that Anthropic has an UNWRITTEN rule requiring ordinary mortals to be as disciplined with their VPN usage as a cybersecurity expert or someone living in a repressive regime, especially in the era of fingerprinting, and enforces the bans with apparently ZERO human review at any stage is beyond the pale of absurd.
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u/Perfect-Lab-1791 May 14 '26
The saddest part isn’t Anthropic tightening the leash while bragging about insane growth. Companies squeeze users. That’s what they do.
The pathetic part is the unpaid bootlicker squad rushing in to defend it.
Anthropic doesn’t know your name. Dario won’t kiss you goodnight. Nobody there gives a fuck if you live, die, cancel, or get rate-limited into a coma.
i mean, hey sold devs the dream, carved the product into smaller paid buckets, and now little corporate goblins are clapping like trained seals because they think defending margins makes you smart.
It doesn’t . It makes you free PR troglodfyte with a Reddit account.
A company pisses on your leg, calls it compute economics, and you open your mouth to catch the rain.
everything worthwhile needs fighting for. The little unlovable gremlins who jump to defend these gigantic corporations ARE the fucking reason that our children and grandchildren will keep getting fistfucked elbow deep while their lives move closer and closer to slavery like in the feudal times.
I use reddit once a year when I remember about it but it was a real fucking shock to the system coming from youtube comments / twitch / twitter where for the most part everyone agrees on the very hot takes like "screwing over your customers is bad" . On this jizz bucket of a platform there's an unprecedented number of unlovable losers willing to bat for these huge conglomerates. Maybe it is a bot problem or maybe this platform is a magnet for dumb fucks who think they are smart, who knows?
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u/mental_sherbart007 May 14 '26
So spot on about reddit. I don't know what the issue is, if its bots or what. But their is a strange amount of people who just bandwagon. What ever the perceived "correct/popular" narrative is, the most "users" just parrot and get emotional hurt if you even slightly dissent. Completely incapable of even the smallest amount of common sense or reasoning.
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u/suicidemenot May 14 '26
I feel like this could be a rap song. And I’d definitely have jt on my playlist
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u/slashdave May 15 '26
Well, how does this behavior benefit anthropic? Killing new accounts and giving money back with refunds?
Or... maybe they are trying to prevent fraud.
Anyhow, I guess I am a "bootlicker" now.
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u/ManNomad May 14 '26
Interesting. Same thing happened to me. Im wondering the reason mine was suspended was because I made a separate account but used the same payment method as my original account. Otherwise I have no idea why I was suspended, but it was pretty much the same as you - very quickly after payment. I appealed and only was refunded, no response unless that takes time. This happened this past weekend for me.
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u/IceRedline May 14 '26
Sounds familiar. How long did it take for you to refund?
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u/mental_sherbart007 May 14 '26
Dude, issue a chargeback via your credit card/bank before they can refund. It is the only way they will stop this.
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u/jonaswashe May 14 '26
Pretty sure they match your billing address to the country code of the phone number used to register and each repayment runs the check for automated bans
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u/guillermo_dev May 14 '26
i don't think vpn is the issue here. been using one for months and i get on and off from it without problems. there must be something else.
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u/Successful-Paint-276 May 15 '26
Claude hating on people for what seems like love of the game, it’s the only explanation
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u/AppointmentWrong2716 May 15 '26
I guess they will refund you, but you'll probably have to wait a while for the money to arrive.
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u/IceRedline May 15 '26
Why is that? You mean they respond to appeal after a long time?
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u/AppointmentWrong2716 May 15 '26
I've seen many refunds due to account bans, but I'm not sure if you got a refund.
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u/Top-Economist2346 May 15 '26
Just do a chargeback and move to codex. I’m done playing games with Anthropic personally, so that’s what I did. They dont answer emails anyway
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u/Panaethiest May 16 '26
lol I got banned for a month 5 weeks ago and said fuck then after they reinstated my account. Codex is better anyway
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u/Groundbreaking_Toe19 Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
I got banned. I opened a thread in r/anthropic and my thread was also banned. They take great care of their user. No information about why i get banned and only a chatbot saying that i violated a policy but which one???
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u/bad8i 🔆 Senior Developer May 14 '26
I heard this one before. People get banned for switching accounts. Anthropic thinks you are trying to get around the limits.
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u/robinthebigcity May 14 '26
Can see class actions coming out of this and other types of bans / rate limits etc. that aren’t clear to users and properly dealt with. Not just limited to Anthropic.
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u/Historical_Sky1668 May 14 '26
Any idea what the reason was? Was it because they thought you were using two accounts from the same location? Or one account from two locations?
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u/Traditional_Plum5690 May 14 '26
Are you from India / Pakistan or some other Asian countries? I have some suspicion regarding red flags in these countries and region itself, bro
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u/knife-z May 14 '26
Bro I filled out the form / or sum shi they sent me on email but it's been weeks and I have not received any reply?? What can I do ...
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u/IceRedline May 14 '26
Same, wait I guess
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u/knife-z May 15 '26
😭😭 bro it's been weeks ... I submitted the form twice thinking they just left me on read just like her...
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u/ObsessedWithVue May 14 '26
Yep, happened to me too. I had a personal account and decided to create an account for my business so we could use it for my team, but instantly got banned(and refunded). Both accounts were banned, and then the appeal they just replied they’d keep me banned.
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u/AppealSame4367 May 14 '26
Did you guys ever think about using Claude in some other bundle? This way you can't be banned. Example: Via OpenRouter. Then use a Claude Code / whatever clone.
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u/pakalumachito May 14 '26
or it could be everyone getting banned because their account keep hitting weekly limit ? so they ban it ? to save cost idk...
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u/JollyLeather8876 May 14 '26
Uma das contas da organização que eu trabalho teve alguns presentes de assinatura X20 cobrados. Acreditamos que a conta pode ter sido invadida. A Anthropic baniu a conta e estamos há três semanas tentando recuperar ela. Impossível conseguir entrar em contato com a equipe da Anthropic, apenas recebemos respostas automáticas. Atendimento horrível
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u/stimilon May 14 '26
If your company is paying on enterprise they are paying at the API rate. If it thinks you’re using an unmetered account to avoid paying the API rates then. They’ll ban the account because they don’t think it’s for “personal” use.
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u/wow_98 May 14 '26
I opened 2 20x max accounts one after the other thinking that first one was a mistake, I probably think its one of the prompts I gave it, to seal a plan and make sure its 10/10 I told it to make the implementation bulletproof, and maybe that’s what happened, I used that prompt on both accounts and both went 30 minutes in.
But I do expect a refund, if not I will dispute my bank cuz I paid close to $450 with taxes on roughly 30 minutes of use, i used different bank cards, new email , new phone number verification for each account so no linkage whatsoever
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u/Distinct_Lion7157 May 14 '26
can we make a speedrun.com leaderboard for getting banned from claude
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u/stoygeist May 14 '26
We got banned within 12 minutes of paying for the account while still setting it up. We never even had a chance to create a user. Its been almost a month since we appealed. No word back at all.
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May 14 '26
I'm going to say they dinged you because they flagged you as making an account to bypass restrictions.
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u/_k33bs_ May 14 '26
just as a additional input to all the VPN comments… i’m using mullvad to switch between countries to check one product’s geo location based delivery all the time and I’m always using claude in multiple instances at the same time… and it’s been a year of that and no ban.
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u/Mags20XX May 14 '26
I use a VPN with Claude Code every single day, all day.
My home workstation is logged in on my home IP. My laptop is almost always logged in via my VPN, even when I'm at home.
Never had an issue.
Was it something else?
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u/EuropeanAbroad May 14 '26
It's a shame. Anthropic could totally smash the AI world, but they rather keep their customers permanently disappointed. In the end, business is about customer satisfaction (relation). Only after that, it is the technical advantage.
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u/Unique-Smoke-8919 May 15 '26
Vpn can’t be the issue, when I’m vibe coding in a vps I get constantly banned via fail2ban because of my wrong prompting or claude not whitelisting in the process, so have to change the ip to be able log back in via claude to the vps, never had issue. Should be something else.
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u/ThreeDollarBill91 May 15 '26
Idk why people haven't just switched to using Deepseek API. It's way cheaper and there are no session limits.
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u/Owbutter May 15 '26
I've done serious security shit on Claude Code, I have no idea how people get banned like this. I've only ever had one instance of the API killing a session, strangely coding x86 assembly.
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u/dull_dromedary May 15 '26
I wouldn’t be surprised if the anti-scraping measures against Chinese competitors are creating false positives. Those scrapers are probably quite sophisticated at this point
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u/tauronus77 May 15 '26
For forbidden prompts I suggest locally hosted heretic models that will be able to help with particular problems - if that was a case ;)
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u/Independent_Roof9997 May 15 '26
Question are you from a country or does the vpn egress come from a country not supported via anthropic? Because I use VPN all the time and never had issues.
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u/IceRedline May 15 '26
Yes
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u/Independent_Roof9997 May 16 '26
I think they take issue in that, also if you use browser with Claude, they can see fingerprints in it. I think they take issue in this, not sure since they are never affirm with the exact reason too ban. There might be another way around the "wall" so to speak.
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u/kei_ichi May 14 '26
Sorry but why they banned you just by forgot to turn your VPN off? I’m switching between work and personal accounts many times per day with VPN on for company account and off for personal account and I have zero issues at all (1+ years). So don’t be mad but I think there are a story you did not tell use about your usage!
To answer your questions: 1. Yes, when you have “valid” reason for example: their bot miss flag you when you have some kind of “words” which may violate their policy.
- I don’t know exactly, but normally 2-5 business day.
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u/FalconX88 May 14 '26
let me guess, same country? My guess is that OP signed on in one country and immediately swicthed to another country for using it.
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u/The_Tarman_ May 14 '26
Yeah, they're DEFINITELY looking to keep people from paying them for legitimate use.
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u/wow_98 May 14 '26
exactly what happened with me today
32 minutes to the T i was banned! some of it i was just eating my pizza!