[Billing][Bug] 12-month Max 20x gift subscription entitlement destroyed during cancel/resubscribe — ~8 months ($1,600) of prepaid term unrecoverable, no human support response

Preflight Checklist

• [x] I have searched existing issues and this hasn't been reported yet
• [x] This is a single bug report (please file separate reports for different bugs)
• [x] I am using the latest version of Claude Code

What's Wrong?

A 12-month Claude Max 20x gift subscription ($2,400, purchased 2026-04-12) was silently destroyed during a cancel/resubscribe operation performed in Anthropic's own UI on 2026-08-13. The account immediately dropped to the Free plan, with roughly 8 months of prepaid gift term (~$1,600 in value) unaccounted for and no path to recover it.

The gift entitlement did not survive the cancellation, was not restored afterward, and is not visible anywhere in billing. No warning was displayed at any point in the cancellation flow indicating that a prepaid multi-month gift term would be forfeited.

What Should Happen?

1. Cancelling or changing a subscription must not destroy a separately-purchased, prepaid gift entitlement. The remaining gift term should persist and resume.
2. If the billing system genuinely cannot preserve a gift entitlement across a plan change, the cancellation UI must warn the user before the action is irreversible — e.g. "You have 8 months of prepaid gift term remaining. Cancelling will forfeit it."
3. Because gift subscriptions have no attached payment method, there is no failed-charge event to trigger reauthorization — the account silently degrades with no notification. Some alerting is needed here.

Error Messages/Logs

Plan after cancel/resubscribe: Free
Gift term purchased: 12 months (2026-04-12)
Gift term consumed: ~4 months
Gift term remaining and unaccounted for: ~8 months (~$1,600)
Gift entitlement visible in billing: no
Warning shown before cancellation: none

Steps to Reproduce

1. Redeem a 12-month Max 20x gift subscription on a personal paid account
2. Use the plan normally for approximately 4 months
3. Perform a cancel/resubscribe operation via account billing settings
4. Account drops to Free plan
5. Remaining ~8 months of prepaid gift term is not restored and is not visible in billing

Claude Model

None

Is this a regression?

I don't know

Last Working Version

_No response_

Claude Code Version

N/A — this is an account/billing platform issue, not a Claude Code CLI issue

Platform

Other

Operating System

Windows

Terminal/Shell

Other

Additional Information

Platform detail: claude.ai (web)
Terminal/Shell detail: N/A

Filing here because there is no other public, trackable escalation channel for billing defects. Anthropic does not offer phone or live chat support, and Fin (the AI first-line agent) cannot restore entitlements or escalate to a billing engineer.

Support attempts to date:

• Direct email to support@anthropic.com with account email, amount, and charge date — no human response
• In-app escalation via Fin — no human response
• Public posts on X — no response

This appears to be part of a recurring class of gift/prepaid entitlement defects rather than an isolated incident. Related reports:

• #47286 — Max 20x gift subscription auto-downgraded to Free after 3 days, 27 days remaining
• #46378 — Max 5x gift subscription automatically canceled, account reverted to Free
• #64928 — Gift code silently consumed when redeemed over an active subscription, never applied afterward (closed as not_planned)
• #41581 — Max subscription downgraded to Free with no user action at all
• #84883 — Paid annual subscription cancelled without notice on plan change, unresolved 5+ weeks

Requested resolution, in order of preference:

1. Restore the remaining ~8 months of the prepaid Max 20x gift term to the account, or
2. Refund the undelivered portion of the $2,400 (~$1,600 for ~8 unused months)

I would prefer to keep using the account and am not seeking to close it. I am asking for either the prepaid service I purchased or the money for the portion that was never delivered.

Invoice ID, account email, and Fin case reference available on request — happy to provide privately to anyone from Anthropic who can action this.