AWS Savings Plan 7-Day Return Window: What You Need To Know

AWS recently introduced a significant update, allowing customers to return Savings Plans within 7 days of purchase. This return window provides AWS users with flexibility for decision-making to correct any purchase errors without suffering the loss of commitment for the next 1 or 3 years. 

For those unfamiliar, AWS Savings Plans are a long-term pricing model allowing users to save up to 72% compared to On-Demand pricing, in exchange for a commitment to a consistent amount of usage (measured in $/hour) for a one or three-year period. You can read more about the types of SPs and granular details from our AWS Savings Plans Guide. 

Highlights of the New Return Policy for AWS Savings Plans:

• Eligibility for Return: Savings Plans are eligible for return if they have an hourly commitment of $100 or less and were purchased within the last seven days. Additionally, the return is only eligible to be processed within the same calendar month of purchase, according to UTC time. 

• Refund Details: Upon returning a Savings Plan, users receive a 100% refund for any upfront payments made towards the plan. This refund will be reflected in the customer’s bill within 24 hours of the return process.

• Usage Charges: Following the return of a Savings Plan, any usage that was previously covered by the plan will either be charged at AWS’ standard On-Demand rates or covered by another applicable Savings Plan, if available.

Restrictions to Returning Savings Plans:

There are several important restrictions to note regarding the return of Savings Plans:

• Consolidated Billing Limit: There’s a cap on the number of Savings Plans you can return per calendar year, set at 10 per management account. This applies whether you’re part of a consolidated billing family or using a single AWS account.

• Activation State: Only Savings Plans in an “active” state are eligible for return. If your Savings Plan is in a “payment-pending” state, you must wait for it to activate before initiating a return.

• Hourly Commitment: The policy for returns is restricted to Savings Plans with an hourly commitment of $100 or less.

• User Permissions: A user must have appropriate permissions to return a Savings Plan. Specifically, only root users or IAM users with the savingsplans:returnSavingsPlan permission can return a Compute Savings Plan or EC2 Instance Savings Plan. This permission is included in the AWS managed policy AWSSavingsPlansFullAccess.

• Purchase Timing: Savings Plans purchased in a different month or in the same month but more than seven days prior (UTC Time) are not eligible for return.

• Payment Options: Savings Plans that are All Upfront or Partial Upfront and registered under AWS Brazil or AWS Turkey are excluded from the return policy.

• Management Account Consistency: The management account initiating the return must be the same as the account used at the time of the Savings Plan purchase.

How To Return an AWS Savings Plan In The 7-Day Return Window

Here’s a Step-by-Step Approach for AWS users to Return their Savings Plans:

1. Log into your AWS Management Console where the Savings Plan was purchased.
2. Open the AWS Billing and Cost Management console.
3. In the navigation pane, under Savings Plans, choose Inventory.
4. Select the Savings Plan you wish to return from the details page, ensuring it meets the return policy criteria.
5. Click on the Return Savings Plan option.
6. Confirm your decision to complete the return process.
7. You can view returned Savings Plans in the Savings Plans inventory page in the console or by calling the DescribeSavingsPlans action in the AWS SDK/CLI. Returned Savings Plans appear with the status of “Returned.”

For more detailed information on purchasing and returning AWS Savings Plans, please refer to the official AWS Savings Plans documentation.

Final Thoughts

With this new return policy, AWS aims to add more flexibility to the long-term commitment model of Savings Plans. Managing commitment plans can be complicated. ProsperOps automatically manages AWS discount instruments, enabling you to maximize your AWS discounts while minimizing commitment risk, without any manual intervention.

Book a demo to understand how our platform can help you save more on the cloud.