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.
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)
First reply:
> Earlier this week, your account was disabled by an automated system for being in violation of our Terms of Service or Acceptable Use Policy. Upon further investigation, we believe this was an error and your account has been reinstated. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience.
We were still banned after few days so I sent another email to ask to be unmanned.
Second message:
> Thanks for getting in touch. Please visit our Safeguards Center for more information about our approach to user safety, warnings, and appeals.
I tried more and more but only got only replies to visit more and more links. I gave up at some point
The achievements of thousands of of agents vibe coding in parallel. Marvellous, simply marvellous. And the news fearmonger how AI will replace jobs. Lol
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.
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...
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
Nope, I have an enterprise account that I use heavily during my day job.
I registered it for my personal business, using my business credit card and I see the payment has been reserved in my banking app, but it hasn't fully registered yet?
It was a Mastercard credit card, and I'm wondering if something along the likes of "3D Secure" credit card protection did this..
The only other explanation I have is that I was trying to connect Zed with Claude, so that redirected me to the Claude site, I registered an account and it said it needed a pro license, so I plugged in my CC details and off it went.
Upon returning the OAuth (or w/e auth it is) back to Zed; it logged me out and told me i was banned.
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.
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
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.
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)_/¯
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.
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.
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.
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)
>(BTW: you will be charged even if they ban you)
Lol, wtf. I'm guessing some jurisdictions would consider that theft.
Did you attempt to appeal? support@anthropic.com is just an AI bot that refuses to connect me through to human support :'(
We did try to appeal.
First reply: > Earlier this week, your account was disabled by an automated system for being in violation of our Terms of Service or Acceptable Use Policy. Upon further investigation, we believe this was an error and your account has been reinstated. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience.
We were still banned after few days so I sent another email to ask to be unmanned.
Second message:
> Thanks for getting in touch. Please visit our Safeguards Center for more information about our approach to user safety, warnings, and appeals.
I tried more and more but only got only replies to visit more and more links. I gave up at some point
Chargeback. Literally the purpose of it is when you were charged for a service you never received
Enough chargebacks will threaten their merchant account
What do people in countries where chargeback is only possible for unauthorized transactions (which wouldn't apply in this case)?
The local equivalent of small claims court? Or the Sam Francisco small claims court that their terms of service seem to agree to.
They don't have a leg to stand on here since the terms of service provide that they will refund you.
If it was for personal use, surely there would be some kind of consumer organization or ombudsman one could contact for advice?
For B2B, I guess the local chamber of commerce might be able to advice.
Complain to your politicians for better regulation?
Anthropic does not offer support to anyone but their largest enterprise clients.
Why is it that the larger the company, the less likely they'll have proper support?
Because “Fuck you, thats why”
Welcome to America, now gimme my money.
The achievements of thousands of of agents vibe coding in parallel. Marvellous, simply marvellous. And the news fearmonger how AI will replace jobs. Lol
Congratulations, you are part of the world's most advanced paid beta. So advanced that you ended up testing the fraud system unwittingly.
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.
Same, I absolutely refuse to engage with Persona in any way.
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...
Not surprised.
Anthropic dogfoods their own product, and, unfortunately, this is what their product produces sometimes.
https://i.imgur.com/Udlfmh0.png
^ the automated system banned me so fast, that the receipt email was delivered after I was banned :')
Kudos for going public with it. Likely the only way to get it resolved.
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
Are you located in a country that is sanctioned by the US?
no - i'm in europe :/
Have you created multiple accounts? And possibly one of more or the others were banned before this?
Nope, I have an enterprise account that I use heavily during my day job.
I registered it for my personal business, using my business credit card and I see the payment has been reserved in my banking app, but it hasn't fully registered yet?
It was a Mastercard credit card, and I'm wondering if something along the likes of "3D Secure" credit card protection did this..
The only other explanation I have is that I was trying to connect Zed with Claude, so that redirected me to the Claude site, I registered an account and it said it needed a pro license, so I plugged in my CC details and off it went.
Upon returning the OAuth (or w/e auth it is) back to Zed; it logged me out and told me i was banned.
That's probably why. You're not allowed to use the subscription with any other coding harness other than Claude Code.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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)_/¯
The same thing happened to me. It's a fucking joke. Located in Denver.
Did you get it resolved?
Nope, I gave up. Sent multiple emails, used their support contacts. No replies, I gave up and moved on.
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.
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.
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.
Another A/B test that affects 2% of users, maybe?
Not only is AI terrible, but it's administrated poorly.
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