Please fix the AWS free tier before somebody gets hurt • Hacker News Board

Re: Please fix the AWS free tier before somebody gets hurt

#21

Post by NullPrefix » Wed, May 05, 2021, 12:50 AM UTC

eric4smith wrote: post #20

harry8 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>DigitalOcean is the worst with the dormant accounts. Just got dinged around $2.40 on my credit card. Going into DO I could not find what was causing that charge. There was nothing there. Wuuuttttt. Wuuuttt? Fraud is what.

I would not go that far to say it's fraud. Calm down. Maybe it's something I missed. Maybe its some hidden feature that I did not turn off. But I deleted all my droplets, all my IP's all my firewalls, etc, etc and could not find anything else.

Could it be a convenience charge?

Re: Please fix the AWS free tier before somebody gets hurt

#22

Post by cddotdotslash » Wed, May 05, 2021, 12:50 AM UTC

It's absolutely unacceptable that AWS hasn't fixed this, but in the meantime, would using a privacy.com temporary credit card with a ~$20 limit when signing up help? I'm unsure if those kinds of cards can be detected/blocked by AWS, or if they do.

Re: Please fix the AWS free tier before somebody gets hurt

#23

Post by josephorjoe » Wed, May 05, 2021, 12:52 AM UTC

HomeDeLaPot wrote: post #19

Is there seriously no way in AWS/Azure/GCP to specify "Here's my budget, shut everything down if I exceed $X"? I don't use those platforms much but was always surprised I couldn't find anything like that right off the bat. I'll build cloud stuff if it makes sense at work, but if I'm footing the bill I'll stick to something that can provide an actual upper limit.

You can set price alerts to email you on the day when you cross a monthly spending limit, but it is not the simplest thing to figure out.

I run a small server and have a few odds and ends and get emails at $5, $15, $50, $75, and $100. Haven't broken $75 limit yet...

Re: Please fix the AWS free tier before somebody gets hurt

#24

Post by artichokeheart » Wed, May 05, 2021, 12:52 AM UTC

AWS employs cost obfuscation by design otherwise the default view when you open the console would show you all of your current active services. Not only is that not the case, a single screen to show you all of your current active services doesn't exist. You need to take a deep dive into cost explorer (assuming you have access in corporate land) and try to decipher in what that all means.

Re: Please fix the AWS free tier before somebody gets hurt

#25

Post by newobj » Wed, May 05, 2021, 12:53 AM UTC

HomeDeLaPot wrote: post #19

Is there seriously no way in AWS/Azure/GCP to specify "Here's my budget, shut everything down if I exceed $X"? I don't use those platforms much but was always surprised I couldn't find anything like that right off the bat. I'll build cloud stuff if it makes sense at work, but if I'm footing the bill I'll stick to something that can provide an actual upper limit.

Of course there's a way. But it's opt-in, not opt-out.

Re: Please fix the AWS free tier before somebody gets hurt

#26

Post by [deleted] » Wed, May 05, 2021, 12:54 AM UTC

HomeDeLaPot wrote: post #19

Is there seriously no way in AWS/Azure/GCP to specify "Here's my budget, shut everything down if I exceed $X"? I don't use those platforms much but was always surprised I couldn't find anything like that right off the bat. I'll build cloud stuff if it makes sense at work, but if I'm footing the bill I'll stick to something that can provide an actual upper limit.

[deleted]

Re: Please fix the AWS free tier before somebody gets hurt

#27

Post by jld » Wed, May 05, 2021, 12:54 AM UTC

A way to limit the max spend per month would be great, even if that means creates outages.

I would happily put a $20/mo limit on many of my accounts. They should never bill more than few dollars a month.

Re: Please fix the AWS free tier before somebody gets hurt

#28

Post by NullPrefix » Wed, May 05, 2021, 12:54 AM UTC

HomeDeLaPot wrote: post #19

Is there seriously no way in AWS/Azure/GCP to specify "Here's my budget, shut everything down if I exceed $X"? I don't use those platforms much but was always surprised I couldn't find anything like that right off the bat. I'll build cloud stuff if it makes sense at work, but if I'm footing the bill I'll stick to something that can provide an actual upper limit.

IIRC the excuse is that billing is a separate department and they count all the usage dollars way after you done using it, not in realtime. You would still be able to go over your limit and then who should foot the bill?

Realtime counting would be too difficult to figure out, our brightest minds are busy figuring out engagement metrics.

Re: Please fix the AWS free tier before somebody gets hurt

#29

Post by jerrysievert » Wed, May 05, 2021, 12:54 AM UTC

I had an AWS account for one of my businesses, and decided to bring it in-house about 2 months ago.

went through the account deletion, and got yet charge/another bill today - account is deleted, so can't log in to see why I'm being charged.

hopefully their support will help out, but not holding my breath.

editing to add: billing was for db backups, I terminated the db, and no clue how to remove the automatic backups it made. of course I can't log in to look any further.

Re: Please fix the AWS free tier before somebody gets hurt

#30

Post by akerl_ » Wed, May 05, 2021, 12:54 AM UTC

throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #16

Oh come on. We all know that the 'accidental revenue' from the way Free Tier is set up probably makes up a cool 2 million or more annually. Plenty to justify its continued abuse of naive students. Why would they walk away from that cash? The only people they're pissing off is people who aren't using AWS anyway.

I’ve heard of plenty of people accidentally blasting past the free tier, or past dev credits, or other ways where they got burned by a surprise bill. 100% of those people have gotten a refund from AWS support by filing a ticket.

AWS pretty clearly isn’t raking in money on this. Even at your imaginary 2 million a year, that’s a drop in the bucket for AWS, let alone Amazon.