We were first alerted to an issue by our monitoring at 4:20 Pacific, 40 minutes before AWS updated their status page. It's infuriating that AWS doesn't communicate more promptly and transparently when an issues like this occurs.
We have business-level support through AWS activate, and it's not any different really - we could submit a ticket and get a phone call back within a 1 hour guarantee, but I'm not sure that would get you much more information or faster resolution for an issue like this. The really big customers presumably have contacts within the AWS team who give them extra information in cases like this.
I had an Urgent-level issue just two days ago (1-hr SLA), also with business-level support through AWS Activate, and it took them THREE hours to get back to me, with me simultaneously waiting on one chat and two phone lines to try to get in contact with anyone I could,
Finally, chat came through--but only after a wait far longer than what their SLA guarantees.
Point being that support probably isn't going to get you much either, especially given that they aren't holding to the 1hr SLA.
