It doesn't change the dynamic though.

At their revenue, don't care about 5K charge, they can send to collections / sell to 3rd party collections agencies.

They do care about keeping you happy as a customer since your employers will be swayed by their employees.

So the former is much more likely to succeed, the latter will just make you look like a scammer.

At larger sums - they will do much more rigorous checks to avoid issues.

It doesn't change the dynamic for AWS. It doesn't change for many of us. But it does for example for a student who forgot to terminate a stack and suddenly can't afford rent/utilities/shopping until the charge is resolved. These are amounts which can really mess up people's lives for weeks.

The former. But if we're talking about $5M instead, I'd be completely terrified of both options.