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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

#131

Post by sofixa »

yoro46 wrote: post #83
sofixa wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Europe is, in the end, too afraid to do it Take a look at the Digital Markets and Digital Services Acts on top of the already active GDPR.

Well, the GDPR isn't there to fine companies for doing the wrong thing. A company's first violation rarely results in fines or disciplinary action. In any case, I do agree that the EU seems to move quicker and act stricter than other regions in regulating big tech companies.

Of course, the point of the legislation (any legislation for that matter) is for things to be improved, not to top up the budget by catching infractions. A warning on first offense is a good principle to adapt (of course baring murder and the like)

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

#132

Post by Xylakant »

terom wrote: post #109
jabiko wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually managed to get my account suspended one day due to nonpayment. It was just a personal toy project and it was completely my fault: I was automatically filtering the mails into a folder that I didn't read until it was too late. If you look at the sheer amount of emails they sent me before suspending the account, Digital Ocean did everything right: https://i.imgur.com/ah13bEA.png They gave lots of warnings an…

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.

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

#133

Post by baobabKoodaa »

intellectronica wrote: post #115

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 custome…

Ah yes, it was the customer's fault. Stupid customer using method recommended by service provider.

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

#134

Post by __d »

moonchrome wrote: post #93
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…

>Having an account suspended because of a billing issue is not exclusive to Google. I'm sorry but : >Despite reassurances "your account will not be suspended" while communicating with billing support, all the projects were suspended at 1am on Saturday. If he contacted someone at customer support, after making sure the mistake was corrected (on whatever side it was) and they assure him that the account will not be sus…

GCP is a SPoF. If you care about your availability, avoid single points of failure. Then it doesn't matter if what support tells you turns out to be not true.

How you do that can vary, but ... billing issues are always a risk. Having two cards, with two different banks, and two different names, is a pretty basic precaution to take. Having multiple cloud providers closes out a bunch more existential risks.

DNS is the one unavoidable SPoF for most Internet businesses: you cannot have a "backup registrar". The best you can do here is pay for a quality service provider: someone who will call you if there's a problem, before they cut you off. That's going to cost a lot more than GoDaddy, btw.

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

#135

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

intellectronica wrote: post #115

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 custome…

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.

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

#136

Post by [deleted] »

londons_explore wrote: post #96
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…

No human working at Google will do an account suspension on a Saturday. So it must have been automation. And there is a very good chance that automation simply hadn't been blocked by the support agent which had been giving reassurances.

[deleted]

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

#137

Post by intellectronica »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #133
intellectronica wrote: post #115

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 custome…

Ah yes, it was the customer's fault. Stupid customer using method recommended by service provider.

No post body was provided.

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

#139

Post by Cantinflas »

thematrixturtle wrote: post #111
Axsuul wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What about telling those robots not to suspend everything and wait for N(weeks|months) or human intervention?

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

#140

Post by paganel »

InCityDreams wrote: post #104
paganel wrote: post #33

The law should come hard on this sort of shenanigans, but hitting on Big Tech has already become a political issue in the US, Europe is, in the end, too afraid to do it (bar some relatively minor extra taxes that Big Tech is all to happy to pay as long as it's not made legally liable in other ways), and here we are, with crazy stories like this one (one of many).

>Europe is, in the end, too afraid to do it (bar some relatively minor extra taxes that Big Tech is all to happy to pay as long as it's not made legally liable in other ways), https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antitrust_cases_against_Goog... $8 billion afraid. If you consider that 'minor', i rather suspect you are being anti-EU just for the hell of it.

If a small butcher-shop round the corner sells the wrong type of meat the authorities first close his shop and then apply the fine, or close the shop and apply the fine at the same time, thing is butcher shop is getting closed no matter what until the issue is resolved. As such, yeah, 8 billion euros/dollars is just the cost of doing business as long as the Google "shop" (or any other FAANG shop) is not closed until the issue is resolved.

Back to this, had any political authority (the EU/US, doesn't matter) applied the same principle in here, i.e. "we won't allow you to sell any cloud-related services anymore until you don't have proper customer service" let's say, I can assure you that would have done a lot more to alleviate problems like this one.

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