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Google Cloud customer wakes up to $18,000 bill despite $7 budget

tomshardware.com

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Re: Google Cloud customer wakes up to $18,000 bill despite $7 budget

#21

Post by ReptileMan »

dpoloncsak wrote: post #3
ReptileMan wrote: post #2

That is quite hostile to their consumers, no matter how they spin it. If you put a budget on something it should be capped.

I am the last person to defend Google Cloud and it's awful UX. With that said, when you go to set a budget it warns you "Setting a budget does not cap resource or API consumption. Learn more." with a hyperlink to https://docs.cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/budgets?_g...

I am fairly sure that this is antipattern on purpose. If you ask a thousand people on the street what a budget means - they will coalesce on - the money I am willing to spend on something.

The fact that google redefine what budget means and put a warning doesn't make it ok.

Re: Google Cloud customer wakes up to $18,000 bill despite $7 budget

#23

Post by caminanteblanco »

brazukadev wrote: post #20
victor106 wrote: post #11

Why doesn’t GCP provide a way to say “shut down all my services if my cap is reached”?

They have a $18,000 reason for that.

Well since they waived the fees, it sounds to me like they have an $18,000 reason to stop this kind of thing from happening in the first place.

I understand that $18k is probably a drop in the bucket, but surely there's a middle ground here.

Re: Google Cloud customer wakes up to $18,000 bill despite $7 budget

#24

Post by pixl97 »

caminanteblanco wrote: post #23
brazukadev wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a $18,000 reason for that.

Well since they waived the fees, it sounds to me like they have an $18,000 reason to stop this kind of thing from happening in the first place. I understand that $18k is probably a drop in the bucket, but surely there's a middle ground here.

They can wave 18k pretty easily because they'll make it up in 18,000 other overcharges of varying amounts that aren't contested. Or that are corporate clients that just eat it.

Things like this are the exact reason that companies end up having to comply with all kinds of regulations. It's just easier to screw the customer first.

Re: Google Cloud customer wakes up to $18,000 bill despite $7 budget

#25

Post by pixl97 »

mhitza wrote: post #18
perryizgr8 wrote: post #5

I think I read somewhere that calculating and limiting cloud usage costs is a really hard problem. But I feel that if Google were motivated to do it, they can do it. It's hard, not impossible. They just don't care to solve this particular problem.

In the article it states that this person had an account that would have been limited to $2000 in usage. And the system automatically upgraded them to higher spending limits when they crossed the $1000 in usage costs. They could definitely make that an opt-in feature.

Yea, makes no sense for it to be opt out. Otherwise it just means there are no limits.

Re: Google Cloud customer wakes up to $18,000 bill despite $7 budget

#26

Post by ricardorivaldo »

jdgoesmarching wrote: post #13
perryizgr8 wrote: post #5

I think I read somewhere that calculating and limiting cloud usage costs is a really hard problem. But I feel that if Google were motivated to do it, they can do it. It's hard, not impossible. They just don't care to solve this particular problem.

It’s hard on AWS as well, but I agree. There’s just no incentive for the billing experience to be better.

aws, gcp, azure (the ones I work with), they don't provide a off the shelf solution to block after some budget ammount. This is not aceptable.

Re: Google Cloud customer wakes up to $18,000 bill despite $7 budget

#27

Post by estimator7292 »

victor106 wrote: post #11

Why doesn’t GCP provide a way to say “shut down all my services if my cap is reached”?

Same reason that you can't cancel a gym membership by walking up to a person and saying "cancel my membership".

Predation, pure and simple.

Google doesn't care, no one is holding them responsible for predatory behavior. It's profitable to steal from your customers and there's no downside to doing so.

Re: Google Cloud customer wakes up to $18,000 bill despite $7 budget

#28

Post by slyall »

ricardorivaldo wrote: post #26
jdgoesmarching wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s hard on AWS as well, but I agree. There’s just no incentive for the billing experience to be better.

aws, gcp, azure (the ones I work with), they don't provide a off the shelf solution to block after some budget ammount. This is not aceptable.

They charge for a lot of things "by the hour". Things like S3, load balancers, storage.

Deleting those when a customer hits a limit will lose customer data or remove things that might be hard to add back. The "I hit my AWS limit and they deleted all my data" headlines will result.

and excluding those things makes the limit soft again..

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