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Google Cloud: $72,000 bill overnight

theregister.com

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Re: Google Cloud: $72,000 bill overnight

#21

Post by franciscop »

raphaelj wrote: post #15

Someone should make a list of all the providers that support some kind of billing budget. It took me way more time than expected to find a CDN that has a budget limit for my personal project (I'm using Bunny CDN)

I've been looking at BunnyCDN and it looks pretty impressive. Is it as good as their landing pages look? Is it like a CDN+DNS so I can point my nameservers there and then configure the CNAMEs inside? (I'm fairly unfamiliar with DNS in general).

I've been pretty happy with Cloudflare, but at some point I added my credit card (silly me) and now I live scared of a DDOS costing me a lot of money.

Re: Google Cloud: $72,000 bill overnight

#22

Post by minxomat »

raphaelj wrote: post #15

Someone should make a list of all the providers that support some kind of billing budget. It took me way more time than expected to find a CDN that has a budget limit for my personal project (I'm using Bunny CDN)

I can also recommend Bunny. Their support is also top notch.

Re: Google Cloud: $72,000 bill overnight

#23

Post by minxomat »

franciscop wrote: post #21
raphaelj wrote: post #15

Someone should make a list of all the providers that support some kind of billing budget. It took me way more time than expected to find a CDN that has a budget limit for my personal project (I'm using Bunny CDN)

I've been looking at BunnyCDN and it looks pretty impressive. Is it as good as their landing pages look? Is it like a CDN+DNS so I can point my nameservers there and then configure the CNAMEs inside? (I'm fairly unfamiliar with DNS in general). I've been pretty happy with Cloudflare, but at some point I added my credit card (silly me) and now I live scared of a DDOS costing me a lot of money.

DNS is in the works, but at the moment no, you need an external DNS with apex CNAME support (e.g. cloudflare)

Re: Google Cloud: $72,000 bill overnight

#25

Post by kristaps »

vinni2 wrote: post #12
dap wrote: post #4

I have seen similar stories with AWS. It’s somewhat shocking to me that there’s no way to ask to get cut off above some dollar limit. Is every customer risking unbounded liability?

What about prepaid credit cards with payment limit? If the payment failed the service will be terminated? Or does aws continue and send an invoice anyway?

Google once (falsely?) considered my Revolut debit card a pre-paid card and refused to accept it for GCS billing. The error message wasn't anything generic either - it stated specifically that pre-paid cards are not accepted.

Re: Google Cloud: $72,000 bill overnight

#26

Post by gazelleeatslion »

raphaelj wrote: post #11
_ahs0 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, if you cancel your Amazon account it doesn’t immediately stop all AWS billing. It is — kid you not — recommended to terminate your individual services to avoid additional billing. Technical limitation of a trillion dollar company? I say scum bag billing

What? How is that even legal ?

Login and click cancel account and read the language. I’m sure it’s because of some of their intertwined or niche services and not everything but is very real.

You can cancel your credit card, but I imagine big Amazon and Co shops/sells their collections to the best on paper deal debt collectors (aka, truly the scummiest and worst ones).

If you have ever been pursued for unpaid debt like this, despite consumer legal protections, it is years of Hell, legal threats/letters, calls, and other gray intimidation. All while wondering if your credit score will just be nuked over night.

Source: Victim of identity fraud

Re: Google Cloud: $72,000 bill overnight

#27

Post by _ahs0 »

Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #19
raphaelj wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? How is that even legal ?

Can you afford better lawyers than Amazon? If not there's your answer...

Speculating but I wager they sell smaller collections in bulk to debt collectors at discount to try and collect vs running in house

Re: Google Cloud: $72,000 bill overnight

#28

Post by mikelward »

raphaelj wrote: post #15

Someone should make a list of all the providers that support some kind of billing budget. It took me way more time than expected to find a CDN that has a budget limit for my personal project (I'm using Bunny CDN)

From what I can tell, the affected project did have a GCP budget.

If you're talking about something pausing service, maybe call it a billing cap for clarity.

Re: Google Cloud: $72,000 bill overnight

#29

Post by ncfausti »

gonzo41 wrote: post #7
blindm wrote: post #3

> Google let go of our bill as a one-time gesture How many times do they have to do that? Because if it is a high number, they would be operating at a loss.

That 72K is probably not anywhere near how cheap it was for google to provide the service.

This was my thought as well.

What other kinds of businesses or services let you run up a bill of tens of thousands of dollars and then say, "Ok, you made a mistake, you can take it back"?

Any educated guesses on what this compute might actually cost Google?

I assume they're able to do this because the fixed costs have mostly been paid for already and the marginal cost of the electricity, system wear, and bandwidth are negligible, but I'm not sure.

Re: Google Cloud: $72,000 bill overnight

#30

Post by jamesrr39 »

#1 reason why I have never, and never plan to (while it remains this way), use GCP/AWS etc while it would be on my personal bank card.

Instead I use DigitalOcean where you have droplet limits that you can set, and the ability the pre-pay if you pay by PayPal, and never enter my bank card.

If anyone from DO (or another provider) is reading this, any chance of pre-payment from bank cards? After reading enough of these articles, this could really swing a cloud provider choice for a small company. (Pre-paid gift vouchers would be cool as well, give someone $10 to spend for Christmas).

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