The service was down. Why am I only offered account credit?

Your service was unavailable during a launch. You lost work, spent hours finding a workaround, and received an offer of credit against next month's bill. The credit looks tiny beside the disruption. Is that what “99.9% uptime” meant?

Start with the remedy the agreement actually defines. A service-level agreement, or SLA, can promise a measured level of availability while specifying a limited credit if the target is missed. It is not automatically a promise to reimburse every loss or refund everything you paid.

Follow the route from incident to remedy

Read these five items in order:

1. What counts as unavailable? A slow response, a failed feature and total loss of connectivity may be treated differently.
2. How is availability measured? Check the time window, affected resource, region and any required configuration.
3. Which fees are eligible? The base might be the affected service's monthly charges, not your entire account, annual payment or lost revenue.
4. How do you claim? Record the deadline, support route, logs, resource identifiers and timestamps.
5. What do you receive? Future credit, a refund, or another remedy—and under what conditions?

If the SLA lives at a link rather than inside your signed document, collect the applicable version using the website-terms checklist. A headline uptime percentage alone is not the complete deal.

A real provider example: AWS Compute

The Amazon Compute SLA was checked on 23 October 2026. Its region-level and individual-instance arrangements have different availability commitments and qualifying conditions. For example, its region-level commitment depends on deployment across the required multiple availability zones or regions. Do not apply that percentage to a single instance without checking the relevant provision.

The SLA calculates credits against eligible monthly charges for affected services and generally applies them to future charges. It says credits do not by themselves entitle a customer to a cash refund, while allowing AWS discretion to issue a card refund. A claim must be submitted by the end of the second billing cycle after the incident, with specified supporting information. Its exclusions and sole-remedy wording also matter.

That is one provider's policy, not a rule for every software, hosting or agency contract. Your provider may define a different deadline, fee base, measurement method or remedy. The underlying agreement can also qualify an SLA's remedy language.

Work out the credit, not the whole business loss

Here is an original fictional example, not an AWS calculation or a quotation of anyone's terms.

Assume a contract offers a 10% credit on eligible monthly charges for the affected service once its stated threshold is met. It excludes setup fees and unrelated products. The incident qualifies, and the claim is on time.

$200 × 10% = $20 credit. It is not $55, because the assumed clause does not credit 10% of the total invoice. It is not compensation for lost sales, because that is not what this assumed remedy measures.

If the $20 is usable only on future bills, record that too. It may be less useful if you are leaving. Do not assume you can deduct it from an unpaid invoice yourself; check how the provider approves and applies claims.

The claim record you can assemble now

Use a small incident log rather than a long complaint with no timestamps:

Gather evidence promptly, even if you have not settled the legal question. If the service is still down, support restoration and a later credit claim may be separate processes.

Credit, cancellation and damages are different questions

A credit approval does not necessarily end the contract. A termination right does not necessarily return prepaid fees. A sole-remedy clause may try to restrict what else you can request for an SLA failure. Read each alongside liability limits, material-breach procedures, refund provisions and applicable law.

Do not assume a business SLA removes mandatory consumer protections where those apply. Equally, do not apply consumer refund rules to a business purchase without checking the relationship and jurisdiction.

If you are leaving, check the renewal and notice calendar and, for an agency-managed website, the handover checklist. Claiming a credit does not perform either task for you.

A focused request to the provider

Please assess incident [reference] under the SLA applicable to [service/version]. The observed failure ran from [time and zone] to [time and zone]. Attached are [evidence]. Please confirm the eligible charges, credit tier, calculation and how any approved amount will be applied. Separately, please identify the terms governing cancellation and prepaid fees if we decide to leave.

An AI review can help connect the SLA to the main agreement, but it cannot inspect your account, prove downtime or submit the claim. Give it the relevant terms and a clear incident description, and verify the resulting clause references yourself.