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Tell HN: Google Cloud suspended our production projects at 1am on Saturday

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Re: Tell HN: Google Cloud suspended our production projects at 1am on Saturday

#111

Post by thematrixturtle »

Axsuul wrote: post #101
danielx wrote: post #12

It sucks that they gave you conflicting information that resulted in this but I wouldn't trust having my cloud infrastructure payments be handled using a single credit card. If you have a spend of over $2500/mo you can apply for invoiced billing directly from Google or if you have less than that you can contact a GCP reseller partner to get invoiced by them. Some GCP reseller partners also have a close relationship w…

What's the benefit of invoiced billing?

You have a person to reach out to if things go pear shaped, and N(weeks|months) to sort out payments issues instead of having everything get suspended by robots.

Re: Tell HN: Google Cloud suspended our production projects at 1am on Saturday

#112

Post by _imba_ »

andrewinardeer wrote: post #88

I know I'm going to come off as a Google apologist, however, I'm leaning towards there being more to the story than what you are saying. The previous month's billing didn't 'went through' and you are unable to zero in on whether this is a Google issue or a you issue. I get that it is easier to complain on the internet and often cathartic do so as a coping mechanism. Having an account suspended because of a billing is…

Not the same person, but this sounds very similar to an experience I had. Payments fail all the time for various reasons, that isn't really the issue. It's what happens after that.

In our case our bank blocked transactions to AWS and Google one night. I contacted the bank and Google, made arrangements and successfully paid the account within a day. I just retried the AWS payment and had no further issues with them.

I had issues with Google for months. Google kept sending me threatening messages about how our accounts suspension is imminent. We'd then follow up with a human, have it resolved, only for the same thing to happen weeks later. Note that there were no outstanding payments, and no failed payments again.

After ranting to friends in startups it became apparent that this was not an isolated incident, and it's always Google.

Re: Tell HN: Google Cloud suspended our production projects at 1am on Saturday

#113

Post by happymellon »

andrewinardeer wrote: post #88

I know I'm going to come off as a Google apologist, however, I'm leaning towards there being more to the story than what you are saying. The previous month's billing didn't 'went through' and you are unable to zero in on whether this is a Google issue or a you issue. I get that it is easier to complain on the internet and often cathartic do so as a coping mechanism. Having an account suspended because of a billing is…

> Until you encounter a billing issue with AWS and move again to Azure and then to DO.

You have to be joking or ignorant. I have never met someone who had a billing issue with AWS that wasn't able to be resolved without shutting off access.

I have never seen a story bubble up on HN about someone who had their account terminated by AWS for no obvious reason.

Perhaps Google is subject to an ongoing smear campaign, or they just attract people who don't know how bill paying works and Google has been completely reasonable. What I do know is that both AWS and Azure have been completely open, honest and will send engineers, account managers or whenever was required to get problems resolved without business impact when I was at both large corporation and early stage startup.

I have never encountered this with any interaction with Google, so it can't be part of their corporate culture, which makes it very unlikely that Google Cloud can be much different.

Re: Tell HN: Google Cloud suspended our production projects at 1am on Saturday

#114

Post by Dave3of5 »

danielx wrote: post #12

It sucks that they gave you conflicting information that resulted in this but I wouldn't trust having my cloud infrastructure payments be handled using a single credit card. If you have a spend of over $2500/mo you can apply for invoiced billing directly from Google or if you have less than that you can contact a GCP reseller partner to get invoiced by them. Some GCP reseller partners also have a close relationship w…

This is what OP should really have done. All of the big cloud providers allow this. We had the same thing with AWS. As soon as you contact your account manager with things like this shit gets done quick. If you are on Pay as you go with a CC your messages just fall into a black hole.

Re: Tell HN: Google Cloud suspended our production projects at 1am on Saturday

#115

Post by intellectronica »

Generally, all cloud providers have two ways of engaging with and billing customers. One is using a credit card, which is very easy for getting started. The other one is having an established relationship with a sales / account team and setting up billing by invoice. Smaller companies sometimes don't understand that and stick with credit card billing for too long. Once you move to production and have your own customers that you can't let down, you should really make the extra effort and move to invoice billing (with all the upfront overhead that entails).

Re: Tell HN: Google Cloud suspended our production projects at 1am on Saturday

#116

Post by riedel »

rglullis wrote: post #64
Sander_Marechal wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are, in Europe, where we have decent regulation and consumer protection with teeth.

I'll buy that when the German auto makers get to pay properly for Dieselgate. Until then, EU regulation will be just a demonstration that money and power still talks just like in the US, the only difference is that Europeans are better at fooling themselves about their moral superiority.

I fully agree that automakers should be held responsible. However, I am feeling a bit of negative sentiment here. What does 'properly' mean? There has been court cases that have been decided against them. Sure there is always more. But this sounds a bit like whatabotism. Also there is a high probability of defeat devices in Citroen, Dacia, Fiat, Ford and Honda cars as well. It is however true that the EU create a huge grey zone. But what does that mean in terms of court cases against cloud providers??

Re: Tell HN: Google Cloud suspended our production projects at 1am on Saturday

#117

Post by cbg0 »

silisili wrote: post #36

Seeing all these horror stories, I can't help but wonder when people are going to switch back to on prem, or at least some hybrid. It's pretty apparent we can't trust cloud providers...

Expect to have issues with colo as well, unless you own the building.

Re: Tell HN: Google Cloud suspended our production projects at 1am on Saturday

#118

Post by karamanolev »

josephg wrote: post #102
emsy wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulation, full stop. The reason Big tech makes so much profits is because they have no accountability and at their scale, social shaming doesn’t work.

I'm a fan of regulating big tech, but in this case reputation will also make a big difference. I know lots of people who actively avoid google's cloud products because they don't trust google not to pull stunts like this. There have been too many stories on HN and twitter over the years of business critical google accounts being suspended for no reason or google cloud products massively increasing their price overnig…

The cost to provide proper support for the 99.9% is much much larger than the benefit of bringing on the possibly 0.1% who don't trust Google and avoid their products. This minority cannot be the solution to the problem.

Re: Tell HN: Google Cloud suspended our production projects at 1am on Saturday

#119

Post by rglullis »

mcny wrote: post #85
rglullis wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These "issues" only exist because of the scale and reach of Corporations. You can not fix "too big to fail" issues unless you stop letting these institutions to grow too big in the first place. I'm yet to hear a single convincing argument of why we need to have organizations of such a large scale nowadays. Could you make a case of what we would be missing if we just "threw the whole thing out"?

I propose another option: unless you can show clear written instructions, the ceo and the board are personally criminally responsible for the acts of their agents, contractors, and employees at the course of their duty. If your branch manager incorrectly adds your teller to an industry wide list of do not hire, the board and CEO are personally criminally responsible for it. No hiding behind the corporate veil. I don’…

> What I’m afraid of is equifax will simply create many companies and divvy up it into equifax backend web services llc that has fewer than 150 employees.

I'd argue that if the split child company ends up only working for the parent, it is easier for the governments to prosecute them. So the child company would have to get other customers and act as a real independent unit or would have to shut down altogether and the parent company would have to go back to the market to find a proper "web service" provider.

I'd also argue that there is no way that a company like Equifax would be able to exist only with 150 people. The whole national level corporation would simply be broken down into many localized offices. Their databases would no longer be shared. The damage that each unit could make would be reduced, and their customers would be much closer to the managers responsible in ensuring that their data is managed properly.

In other words, my argument is that Capitalism and market forces do work. We just need to have these systems deployed in the correct scale.

Re: Tell HN: Google Cloud suspended our production projects at 1am on Saturday

#120

Post by robertlagrant »

belorn wrote: post #90
rglullis wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. Heavily-regulated industries like banking, auto and healthcare are known for being so much better at treating its customers like human beings...

Unregulated banking tend to have a bit more ponzi schemes, pump and dump, and money laundering than regulated banking. Unregulated auto tend to have a bit more lemon markets than regulated auto. Unregulated healthcare tend to have a bit more snake oil, blood letting and cocaine than regulated healthcare. Unregulated food sector tend to have a bit more Listeria and Salmonella then regulated food sector. No regulation…

> one can't dismiss regulation as just being bad

No one said that.

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