This is backwards thinking. Why require customers to file a claim for what are obvious outages? Instead, AWS should automatically apply credits to those accounts that have paid for guaranteed uptime without requiring this whole silly claims process.

The mechanism can be really simple. If AWS themselves posts an outage to their status page and/or some third-party service posts an outage then credits are immediately applied to the services where there are outages for those that paid for high level uptime guarantees without requiring any claims process. It can easily be done if they want to do it that way.

Of course from a business perspective I understand why they're doing it the way that they are. If they can make customers jump through hoops, then only those who really care will follow through. Meanwhile the uptime guarantee can continue as an empty promise.

When my ISP was unable to provide connectivity for an extended period, it automatically compensated me. I didn't have to do anything. The relevant system was being monitored, the ISP knew exactly when it was out of service, and I was credited accordingly with an apology and a note on my next bill showing the reduction. It doesn't seem unreasonable to expect the biggest name in the cloud to do something similar to support its customers when it screws up.

It's much more likely that the reason is someone going "well what if people want to abuse this?" without any evidence that they would.

Also: requiring your customers to ask for their money back when you know that you didn't deliver the service promised and all other billing is automated.. come on.