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Avoid Surprise Bills from AWS

blog.begin.com

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11–20 of 76 posts

Re: Avoid Surprise Bills from AWS

#11

Post by stopagephobia »

echelon wrote: post #5

How much does a domain name like "begin.com" cost, and how do you get a good domain / brand name for your startup (without calling it "PurpleKerfuffle" or something unregistered)? Is there a market for this? A strategy? I'm trying to get something good, but I keep getting back figures in the millions of dollars. Even ".io" domains are $100k. It's ridiculous. Am I doing something wrong?

Some of us People of Age remember when getting a good domain was easy before squatters :)

And yes its hard now. In real life you can have the same business name in two different business areas as long as it doesn't cause confusion. I think we should get rid of domains all the way, I should be able to register any text and make it DNS resolve.

Only answer for having squatters is to make any "domain" buyable so they can't get all the good ones.

Re: Avoid Surprise Bills from AWS

#13

Post by mullingitover »

If you're using Datadog with its AWS integration, you can pull in your billing metrics and set up anomaly detection monitoring. If you set it up as a multi-alert, Datadog can event alert you on the specific category that has a billing anomaly.

Re: Avoid Surprise Bills from AWS

#14

Post by laegooose »

eqmvii wrote: post #9

If only there were a way to stop the surprise billing once it starts. A friend created an AWS account with a new email address for a one-off side project, and wound up locked out of both the email account and the AWS account. But AWS has the credit card, so a 25 cent mystery charge appears every month. AWS support is completely useless despite years of attempts at escalation, and of course the credit card company can…

That's a lot of worries about 3$ per year.

Re: Avoid Surprise Bills from AWS

#15

Post by nijave »

eqmvii wrote: post #9

If only there were a way to stop the surprise billing once it starts. A friend created an AWS account with a new email address for a one-off side project, and wound up locked out of both the email account and the AWS account. But AWS has the credit card, so a 25 cent mystery charge appears every month. AWS support is completely useless despite years of attempts at escalation, and of course the credit card company can…

Report the card as stolen so it's reissued with a new number :)

Re: Avoid Surprise Bills from AWS

#16

Post by heavyset_go »

eqmvii wrote: post #9

If only there were a way to stop the surprise billing once it starts. A friend created an AWS account with a new email address for a one-off side project, and wound up locked out of both the email account and the AWS account. But AWS has the credit card, so a 25 cent mystery charge appears every month. AWS support is completely useless despite years of attempts at escalation, and of course the credit card company can…

It's an absurd solution, but they can cancel the card and get a new one, and that will stop AWS from being able to bill them.

Re: Avoid Surprise Bills from AWS

#17

Post by Supermancho »

zatarc wrote: post #6

Step 1: Avoid AWS.

This was my first thought. Understand that it's a financial risk to work with AWS at both small and large scale.

I have a personal AWS setup that has no costs, at this time. I've run a business account at 50k+/mo. I've never had an account suspended or lost my credentials and those stories scare me a bit.

Re: Avoid Surprise Bills from AWS

#18

Post by Quikinterp »

laegooose wrote: post #14
eqmvii wrote: post #9

If only there were a way to stop the surprise billing once it starts. A friend created an AWS account with a new email address for a one-off side project, and wound up locked out of both the email account and the AWS account. But AWS has the credit card, so a 25 cent mystery charge appears every month. AWS support is completely useless despite years of attempts at escalation, and of course the credit card company can…

That's a lot of worries about 3$ per year.

I think it's the premise rather than the cost that matters. I'd be scared that $3 turns into $300 or something

Re: Avoid Surprise Bills from AWS

#19

Post by ProAm »

heavyset_go wrote: post #16
eqmvii wrote: post #9

If only there were a way to stop the surprise billing once it starts. A friend created an AWS account with a new email address for a one-off side project, and wound up locked out of both the email account and the AWS account. But AWS has the credit card, so a 25 cent mystery charge appears every month. AWS support is completely useless despite years of attempts at escalation, and of course the credit card company can…

It's an absurd solution, but they can cancel the card and get a new one, and that will stop AWS from being able to bill them.

This is a good way to go to collections (at least in the US) and have your credit rating harmed. Probably not for .25c but everyone who says just to cancel a card to stop annoying bills is not a good answer.

Re: Avoid Surprise Bills from AWS

#20

Post by nijave »

mullingitover wrote: post #13

If you're using Datadog with its AWS integration, you can pull in your billing metrics and set up anomaly detection monitoring. If you set it up as a multi-alert, Datadog can event alert you on the specific category that has a billing anomaly.

You can do that with native CloudWatch monitoring, too, but it doesnt work well with spikey charges like up front reservations and things billed at the beginning of the month

Technically they are "anomalies" but there's no human interaction required so you get false positive alarms. It also doesn't work well beyond a certain $ amount since the error bars get pretty big

Is DataDog better with that?

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