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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

#181

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

FBISurveillance wrote: post #155
dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very happy Hetzner has all these options built in from the very start. There's no need to make any "extra effort". Actually, most of my servers are on yearly billing to make things even easier for everybody.

Except finance. At certain scale (in my case, 5 figures/mo spend with a vendor and up), paying upfront is not something finance usually likes and NET-60/NET-90 is the norm.

Actually, it was exactly finance in the case of one of my clients. "Dear Mr dvfjsdhgfv, we're receiving invoices from this Hetzner company for some ridiculously small amounts each month which adds to our overhead, could you kindly ask them to bill us yearly? Thanks!"

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

#182

Post by CaptainZapp »

Xylakant wrote: post #132
terom wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like you setup multiple instances across different availability zones for redundancy, you also need multiple billing contacts in case one of them fails and causes an outage. Not sure how to mitigate these risks for providers that only support one "project owner" with a single billing address :/

Use a “synthetic” project owner with an email address that forwards to the group.

That could backfire, since nobody really feels in charge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect

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

#183

Post by vbezhenar »

b112 wrote: post #157
belter wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These type of stories, that appear regularly on HN, seem in the vast majority, related to only one specific provider.

Google is just horrible, when it comes to any form of support, paid or not. They make paypal look helpful by comparison. I really can't understand why anyone would use any of their services. Support counts. It's one of the first things I look at, when evaluating any external partner. What does it cost, how long does it take for it to happen, etc? Whatever anyone else says in this thread, that's what you need to deter…

Google tech is the best. Google invented k8s, their k8s cloud is the best in the world. There's nothing similar to GKE Autopilot. Similar things could be said about some other services. People want the best cloud and they hope that those issues won't affect them.

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

#185

Post by intellectronica »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #141
intellectronica wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

For the record, I was being sarcastic and do not actually believe it was the customer's fault. I believe this is an abhorrent way of running business by Google.

Right, but I think your sarcasm was misplaced. It is actually possible for customers to make a mistake. These mistakes are relatively easy to prevent. It could be that in this particular case there wasn't anything the OP could have done and they are simply unlucky. But that's very unlikely.

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

#186

Post by fabioyy »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #176
junon wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone just the other day said Hetzner did the exact same thing though...

I'm not a blind fan of Hetzner and I'm aware of their limitations, but billing works extremely well for me, and they're very patient with me when I forget to pay an invoice (sending friendly reminders and not threatening to cut me off right away). However, I remember a case when I was the culprit - spam was being sent from one of my servers (one of the users had a common username and password, something I should have…

i was BANNED from hetzner when i forgot to Pay ( it has been almost 10 years ).at the time i offer to Pay any debts, but they said that i was not welcome anymore.

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

#187

Post by bratbag »

karamanolev wrote: post #118
josephg wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Anecdotally I cannot remember the last time I have mentioned GCP in person or in online discussions without the conversation turning into why no-one wants to use them for anything serious.

I suspect it's far more than 0.1%. They have a bad reputation and word-of-mouth is now working against them.

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

#188

Post by mberning »

This would be a situation where government should step in with some regulatory authority. The public utilities in general cannot cut off your electric or gas service for a simple billing issue. And in some cases, such as during a harsh winter, than cannot disconnect you at all. We need something like this for cloud providers.

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

#189

Post by gumby »

belter wrote: post #162
hazbo wrote: post #124

A few years ago I was working at a startup and we had just started moving some stuff over from AWS to GCP. Things were going pretty good with GCP until one day they pulled the plug on everything with no explanation. It turns out that our company credit card details had been fraudulently used without our knowledge. The criminal had decided to use the card to buy Google Ad Words or something like that - this is the sam…

Sounds like those Whiteboard interviews need to incorporate Graph Deterministic Algorithms for Highly-Dynamic Networks...

Need another Leetcode section on heartlessly screwing your SaaS customers.

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

#190

Post by bratbag »

seaman1921 wrote: post #97
bilalq wrote: post #6

I wonder what it would take to bring a culture change to Google so they can finally start having some empathy for customers and stop the casual cruelty. A new CEO?

empathy for customers not paying ? lol

In this case, for customers who do pay and get fucked over by google anyway.
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