You could cut down costs or at least improve cost-predictability by hosting something like https://deepstream.io/ instead of Firebase. The problem however is that you are still exposed to your cloud provider's fees - if AWS or Google Cloud up their band-with cost, you're in the same boat. Than again, the independence gained by running a server in a basement comes with a very hefty penalty.
A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month
271–280 of 516 posts
Re: A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
This works well in India, with 2-factor auth — Indian companies can't charge my debit or credit card just because they have the card number, expiry and CVV. I have to approve each transaction with my bank. I'm wary of giving my card information to companies outside India because I don't have this protection.
>Indian companies can't charge my debit or credit card just because they have the card number, expiry and CVV. I have to approve each transaction with my bank. True for Indian companies but what if you get charged via Forex abroad? For me - Google or Steam - don't required 2FA. All I have to do is to enter my number, confirm CVV then zap. It gets debited. I do get a call from my bank (HDFC) asking if this transaction…
Yes, foreign transactions are exempt, which is why I said I was wary giving my card to companies outside India.
Re: A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. I don't understand why the larger internet/tech community keeps giving Google a pass on this. Anything where money comes in or out should ultimately have a support line where ultimately a human custome…
I don't know if Firebase has a reseller program, but for other cloud offers from Google, my advice is: if you want someone you can scream at, buy from a reseller instead of buying directly from Google. Last week at thegoodfellas.com.br a disgruntled ex-employee managed to erase all their Gmail accounts and change the administrator account in order to prevent recovery. You can recover a deleted account in 5 days, but…
I administer a couple G Suite accounts for small business owner friends purchased direct from Google.
G Suite has incredible phone support. I've called 3-4 times over past 5 years and never waited more than 30 seconds to talk to a knowledgeable and capable tech who resolved the issue immediately. No BS troubleshooting steps, just straight to the heart of the issue.
I recall a couple Irish guys, one Eastern European and one Indian, but none with too-strong to parse accents (these were their locations -- relevant to make the point that Google clearly does have multiple live phone support centers around the world). All fully willing and capable of resolving the issue without passing me around. These weren't incredibly complex issues, but at least a couple were glitches requiring fixes on the backend (vs. mistakes on my part).
Has anyone with a G Suite account and a Cloud account ever tried contacting G Suite Support for the cloud side? Might be worth a try -- they've been helpful for me in one case where the issue wasn't strictly related to G Suite.
Re: A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month
#274Pricing mistake 101: You never ever change those old plans. Instead, you grandfather them. Especially so if you're still a young platform and have most growth ahead of you, the "loss" of not charging the new - and supposedly higher - pricing is gonna be trivial 2 years from now, with lots of new projects coming in. But the NPS hit from pissing your most loyal users off and the subsequent damage to your growth curve a…
Tell that to FastMail, who have pissed me off by deciding to end-of-life the "lifetime" 16Mb member account I set up for my father with a one-time $15 payment. 16Mb is modulo zero these days, but it's enough for him - he just deletes some emails when it gets full. He also gets imap access and FastMail's spam filtering, which is really very good. I can also assign him an email address from a domain that I own that is…
Thanks for sharing this. I had recently set up an account with FastMail, but now that it's clear that they won't abide by their own promises, I'll look elsewhere.
Re: A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month
#275Re: A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Some individual Google employees are very helpful and open. Unfortunately Google as a company and their corporate practices are nothing like that.
Some of their teams, for example tensorflow, are very very helpful.
Re: A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But you KNOW going in - there's no support. I know this but to say everyone does or should isn't exactly fair. As well, you assume I am holding the purse strings, that I'm in any way responsible or even have a say in procurement. This may be true in my own business (it is) but not necessarily elsewhere, like my clients (it more often than not isn't ) and you'll just have to live with poor decisions made on your beh…
"Ideally they vote with their wallets and just leave Google, but again that's just easier said than done in many cases." That's the ONLY thing that will ever make this change, but it rarely happens because "sunk cost" rationalizations (and "maybe it'll get better next year!"). Shouting from the rooftops for years has not worked. This is not anywhere near a 'new' problem. Yes, possibly some people don't know it, and y…
Ok, I've missed your point now – what are you actually trying to say? That Google being unprofessional and delivering on the whole sub-par services is OK because a lot (but not all) people already know this, and so really paying customers should just suck it up or go elsewhere, regardless of whether or not they even can in the first place?
If I've misrepresented what you're trying to say here please do correct me, because I clearly don't get it. If I haven't, I suppose we'll just have to agree to disagree – I think customers should shout from the rooftops till they're blue if they want to, even if it seems to lead nowhere.
Re: A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month
#278Reminds 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 learnt this lesson the hard way. Solution: get a separate debit (not credit!) card for all cloud stuff. Make sure you only transfer enough money on to it each month to cover what you reasonably expect your bills to be (and that you can quickly top it up in hours if you legitimately need to). Worst case, if AWS or Google decide to fuck you over, let the bill bounce. This way you've still got funds on hand to deal wi…
Google stopped accepting my Debit card a year ago! Even after 14 months of calls / emails the issue is still here. I don't have other options rather than throw Google Cloud to the garbage bin (where actually it live).
Re: A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tell that to FastMail, who have pissed me off by deciding to end-of-life the "lifetime" 16Mb member account I set up for my father with a one-time $15 payment. 16Mb is modulo zero these days, but it's enough for him - he just deletes some emails when it gets full. He also gets imap access and FastMail's spam filtering, which is really very good. I can also assign him an email address from a domain that I own that is…
There could be technical issues with keeping grandfathered plans around. Maybe the 16mb email accounts were on an old system that was getting increasingly difficult to maintain?
Then they should upgrade the account to a new plan without cost imo.
Re: A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course, this approach only works if you're happy to have your service cut off more or less abruptly if your card bounces, something the author of the article explicitly mentions isn't an option. The problem (in the article at least) isn't being surreptitiously billed a large amount, it is cost of a critical service changing dramatically without warning.
They won't cut you off immediately and the gain you get is some breathing space/wriggle room to decide what your next step is going to be once you've been landed with a huge, unexpected bill. Also, nothing gets them talking to you faster than a bounced invoice :)
Perhaps. Or perhaps they block or throttle your account. Stopping payment is the nuclear option, you can't expect any cooperation with outstanding payments on your account (not that you necessarily can with a fully paid up account), and your position, if you should choose to pursue legal action, just got a lot more complicated.