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Make them prove you used it to generate the charges. Make them provide IPs etc. You need to say it was used fraudulently and you don’t agree to the charges.
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Thanks for responding to this and offering to escalate boulos. I certainly don't think a student just learning the ins and outs of a cloud provider's services should be able to spend 10k+ without warnings/thresholds that require configuration to exceed. It would be positive for platform adoption to make that process better.
This is hilarious. Student doesn’t understand security in depth model, gets owned. Has a sour taste with said cloud provider. At what level do you accept responsibility for shoddy security practices. If the project was truly defunct then you should have closed the project or removed everyone’s access who isn’t project owner. Hindsight is 20/20.
I agree completely-- Google's practices are terrible here. Who in their right mind would render $14,000 worth of services to a customer for which no due diligence was performed? They never stopped to make sure someone whose usage went from zero to the stratosphere was legit or has the ability to pay such a bill?
No other industry would do something so amateur. Lawyers work on retainer. Bartenders will preauthorize your card before letting you clean out the top shelf. Landlords do credit/background checks before letting you assume tenant rights under their roof. Steam will block your credit card until verification if you buy one too many hats. Know your fucking customer!
eFax and stamps.com are the only other businesses I'm aware of who do stuff like this, and it's done by design. You forget to cancel your free trial or account, they'll let the subscription bills accrue into the thousands and then send debt collectors after you to shake you down for a settlement.
Next use a credit card. Basically thanks to credit card laws the bank will go tell google to f off and give you your money back. Debit cards don't have the same protection, but just call your bank or OCS ( https://www.occ.treas.gov/ ). They have a little more bite.
His debit card ended up declining it anyway, but that's not the point. The point is Google thinks he owes them thousands of dollars, and a collection agency is hounding him for the money. Disputing a charge with your credit card company doesn't change that. The credit card company might side in your favor and reverse the charges, but the original company can still pursue payment with you directly. Their claim can eve…
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Nice victim shaming you got there. The fault of all of this is 100% on whoever stole the credentials and made those calls. OP could maybe have been more careful but that doesn't mean it's all his fault or that we should be shaming in oblivion. And Google can still try to help rather than just take advantage of the situation. Life is easier when we are not dicks to each other, a little empathy can go a long way.
I think a lot of the problems we face today are largely unacknowledged by those who create them. The delivery lacked any empathy but does not make it less true. Actions have consequences and ignorance of those outcomes doesn’t mean you can escape them. The world would be a little bit better of a place if we’d stop coddling those who float haphazardly through their own existence.
Why? Do you never ever make mistakes?
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This is hilarious. Student doesn’t understand security in depth model, gets owned. Has a sour taste with said cloud provider. At what level do you accept responsibility for shoddy security practices. If the project was truly defunct then you should have closed the project or removed everyone’s access who isn’t project owner. Hindsight is 20/20.
Nice victim shaming you got there. The fault of all of this is 100% on whoever stole the credentials and made those calls. OP could maybe have been more careful but that doesn't mean it's all his fault or that we should be shaming in oblivion. And Google can still try to help rather than just take advantage of the situation. Life is easier when we are not dicks to each other, a little empathy can go a long way.
I found my new email signature.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nice victim shaming you got there. The fault of all of this is 100% on whoever stole the credentials and made those calls. OP could maybe have been more careful but that doesn't mean it's all his fault or that we should be shaming in oblivion. And Google can still try to help rather than just take advantage of the situation. Life is easier when we are not dicks to each other, a little empathy can go a long way.
>>>Life is easier when we are not dicks to each other, a little empathy can go a long way. I found my new email signature.
Sorry this happened to you! Feel free to send me your case number (email in profile), and I'll escalate it. The Support personnel have hopefully been helping out, as all Billing Issues are covered regardless of support tier. I obviously don't know the ins and outs of payment instrument refunds / do debit cards mean that you actually do have to contact your bank, but I'm sure people in Support do.
Not to blame the victim, but at the time the original charges happened, OP didn't respond to the Support person for 3-days (our usual timeout) on "Hey, is this resolved on your side?". Tell them no! :). Glad this got resolved quickly though.