diff --git a/builder/amazon/common/access_config.go b/builder/amazon/common/access_config.go
index 66b595300..7eb027132 100644
--- a/builder/amazon/common/access_config.go
+++ b/builder/amazon/common/access_config.go
@@ -50,11 +50,12 @@ func (c *AccessConfig) Session() (*session.Session, error) {
 	// default is 3, and when it was causing failures for users being throttled
 	config = config.WithMaxRetries(20)
 
-	if c.RawRegion != "" {
-		config = config.WithRegion(c.RawRegion)
-	} else if region := c.metadataRegion(); region != "" {
-		config = config.WithRegion(region)
+	region, err := c.region()
+	if err != nil {
+		return nil, fmt.Errorf("Could not get region, "+
+			"probably because it's not set or we're not running on AWS. %s", err)
 	}
+	config = config.WithRegion(region)
 
 	if c.CustomEndpointEc2 != "" {
 		config = config.WithEndpoint(c.CustomEndpointEc2)
@@ -119,7 +120,7 @@ func (c *AccessConfig) IsChinaCloud() bool {
 }
 
 // metadataRegion returns the region from the metadata service
-func (c *AccessConfig) metadataRegion() string {
+func (c *AccessConfig) metadataRegion() (string, error) {
 
 	client := cleanhttp.DefaultClient()
 
@@ -128,13 +129,14 @@ func (c *AccessConfig) metadataRegion() string {
 	ec2meta := ec2metadata.New(session.New(), &aws.Config{
 		HTTPClient: client,
 	})
-	region, err := ec2meta.Region()
-	if err != nil {
-		log.Println("Error getting region from metadata service, "+
-			"probably because we're not running on AWS.", err)
-		return ""
+	return ec2meta.Region()
+}
+
+func (c *AccessConfig) region() (string, error) {
+	if c.RawRegion != "" {
+		return c.RawRegion, nil
 	}
-	return region
+	return c.metadataRegion()
 }
 
 func (c *AccessConfig) Prepare(ctx *interpolate.Context) []error {