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A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month

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Re: A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month

#41

Post by stemuk »

imron wrote: post #30
apatters wrote: post #24

Wowow! In this position my first step would be to determine if there's any legal basis for disputing the charge (an informal conversation with a lawyer or even just someone who's been through a similar experience is a fine start). Even when a billing change is disclosed in advance and the customer actually uses the bandwidth, massive spikes in metered pricing are a tricky area and have attracted the attention of regu…

> immediately dispute the charge with your credit card company This will result in the shutdown of their service, and ruin their app.

I would also doubt that it would be worth it even without keeping in mind the risk of loosing the service. Google is usually pretty clever when it comes to TOS Agreements.

Re: A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month

#42

Post by kuschku »

flipp3r wrote: post #14

Reminds me of getting Bait-and-Switch'd by Google App Engine in 2011. From 10's of euros to 1000's. > They have no phone number to contact, no way to dispute this other than email — which they have ignored us for over a month now without replying to our continued requests. Trapped. Doomed. We have no further options. Sounds like Google did a great job with Firebase. Definitely gives you that Google-feel of unresponsi…

Funnily, I was working on cloning a particular piece of Firebase functionality, and inquired if they could help me with that (or if they had that particular piece in open source), and got more replies from them for that than apparently this paying user ever got.

Very typical from Google.

Re: A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month

#43

Post by stephenr »

piokoch wrote: post #8

I am so surprised why people buy into some SAAS software that does simple things instead of hiring 2 programmers from cheap location (somewhere between India and Poland western border), getting Hetzner VPS or dedicates server (even the second option is cheap, including a few administrator hours) and be done. It is not so hard to predict failure/buy out of some SAAS provider, it happened so many times. I am curious wh…

> Venture Capital investors

Nothing in the entire VC Funded startup scene makes sense when you try to apply basic logic, much less a sane way to operate a sustainable business.

But that's just it: These companies are funded by people who are simply in it to make a profit, (as opposed to people who want to actually achieve something with their efforts). Users become dollar signs, and it's all about how quickly you can get enough new users to monetise the bejeezus out of their attention/personal information/etc, before they dump you for the next new flavour of the week.

Re: A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month

#44

Post by kuschku »

stemuk wrote: post #37

Did a Firebase team member already comment on this? In a few hours Google will present some new Firebase features at io17, and I would expect them to avoid bad press now as much as possible...

That's probably the purpose of this post — the best way to get support from Google, after all, is still by posting a story on reddit, twitter or HN.

Which is pretty sad.

Re: A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month

#45

Post by neftaly »

We've also gone from ~$25/mo to $1000-2000/mo with the pricing change. While it's not the end of the world (we're near shipping replacements for FB stuff anyway), there's also been 3-4 incidents of downtime (> 1 hour) in the last 2 months, with no way to contact anyone except their stupid web form.

Re: A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month

#46

Post by mstade »

mosselman wrote: post #36
Aeolun wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jup, had the same issue with Google App Engine. Luckily I could contact support... "What do you mean, you retain a running instance of every previous instance I pushed?!" Fun times.

"you retain a running instance of every previous instance I pushed?!" What? Seriously? Is this documented anywhere? Would you recommend against using GAE?

> Would you recommend against using GAE?

I've been burned so hard by them, I'd recommend against using anything Google.

Re: A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month

#47

Post by mstade »

flipp3r wrote: post #14

Reminds me of getting Bait-and-Switch'd by Google App Engine in 2011. From 10's of euros to 1000's. > They have no phone number to contact, no way to dispute this other than email — which they have ignored us for over a month now without replying to our continued requests. Trapped. Doomed. We have no further options. Sounds like Google did a great job with Firebase. Definitely gives you that Google-feel of unresponsi…

> I bet they also have a "community" support forum or Google Group full of helpless people talking to a virtual wall.

This is Google support summed up perfectly in a single sentence. It really is appalling.

Re: A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month

#48

Post by thr0waway1239 »

philfrasty wrote: post #38
manigandham wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the Amazon guys will leave money on the table What? they're a business like any other and they're not interested in minimizing profit, there's lot of thought that goes into their pricing and you can be sure that your opinion and trust is an outcome of their strategy to make more money.

„...you can be sure that your opinion and trust is an outcome of their strategy to make more money...“ Is exactly what the parent comment said...

..making up in scale what you lose in margin.

I think Amazon pulls this off because their prima donna is the paying customer, not the programmer who thinks talking directly to customers is the worst possible reflection of their ability to automate. Automation is great and all, but Google has a major problem when it comes to empathizing with the customers.

Also, is there any possibility of legal action against Google for this bait and switch, which seems to be quite clearly the case here?

Re: A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month

#50

Post by Jumziey »

youngtaff wrote: post #22

"This includes failed attempts which are blocked by their security rules." Ouch!

I'm guessing that spamming invalid request on all of firebases customers endpoints is the most efficient way to deal with the whole ordeal... If a large enough customer base gets the problem they'll have to act... Unless they can happily close up shop because Google owns them... Ah well :(
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