AWS criticized for 'abusing' Korean clients

By Jun Ji-hye

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is facing growing criticism for its “unfair” and “abusive” attitude in dealing with client companies in Korea, according to local company officials Thursday.

They said many Korean clients complain about AWS' customer support and technical assistance, as well as its responses when its cloud computing services are disrupted.

AWS, the world's largest cloud service provider with a 40 percent global market share, has been dominating the Korean market.

The officials said AWS was using its dominant market power to commit numerous acts of “gapjil” against its clients. Gapjil is a Korean term meaning an abusive attitude and behavior by those in positions of power toward subordinates.

“AWS asks clients to sign a separate tech support contract to receive technical assistance. This is in contrast to domestic cloud computing service providers that operate customer centers for free customer support,” an official from a Seongnam-based IT company said on condition of anonymity.

“AWS has also dumped customer claims management on partners such as Bespin Global.”

Clients' complaints reached a boiling point when dozens of companies here using AWS cloud computing services suffered unprecedented connection failures Nov. 22 last year.

At the time, companies in diverse industries, including e-commerce company Coupang, hotel-booking app Yanolja, online door-to-door grocery service Market Kurly, food delivery app operator Baedal Minjok and budget carrier Eastar Jet, suffered connection failures both on their websites and mobile apps for 84 minutes.

Cryptocurrency exchanges such as Upbit also experienced the same problem, disrupting trading by investors.

An official from one of the affected companies said AWS did not compensate them properly.

“In general, when clients experience problems with services, the service provider comes forward with compensation offers. But AWS was not that active in doing so,” the official said. “Later, we heard from AWS that the incident was settled amicably, but there was no proper compensation for clients.”

He said the affected companies were unable to voice their opinions about the losses they had suffered due to AWS' grip on the market.

The officials said AWS' response to the 2018 service disruption was in stark contrast to what KT did for small business owners after a fire broke out on Nov. 24 last year at a KT facility in western Seoul, causing unprecedented internet and phone disruptions, including the use of credit cards.

KT paid out about 7 billion won ($5.9 million) to compensate about 12,000 small business owners.