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A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month

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Re: A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month

#481

Post by mstade »

ikeboy wrote: post #146
mstade wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, let the providers take the risk. Typically, the providers will let it bounce a few times before cutting things off as well. This might just give you another week or two to sort things out, without having to lay out possibly significant funds that you may or may not be able to reclaim. I only wish setting up virtual cards were as easy as setting up a new mail box. I know there are services out there that lets…

emburse.com

Looks great, but like many other services like it, it's US only[1]:

> Is Emburse available outside of the U.S.?

> Only companies incorporated within the U.S. may register for an Emburse account. In addition, the primary account owner must be a resident of the United States with a Social Security number and a verifiable physical U.S. street address (no P.O. Boxes). We do not offer Emburse accounts to residents of Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and other U.S. territories.

[1]: https://www.emburse.com/faq

Re: A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month

#482

Post by mstade »

elvirs wrote: post #168
mstade wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, let the providers take the risk. Typically, the providers will let it bounce a few times before cutting things off as well. This might just give you another week or two to sort things out, without having to lay out possibly significant funds that you may or may not be able to reclaim. I only wish setting up virtual cards were as easy as setting up a new mail box. I know there are services out there that lets…

privacy.com?

Alas it's US-only[1], like so many other services:

> What countries are you available in?

> We're only available in the United States at the moment.

[1]: https://privacy.com/faq

Re: A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month

#483

Post by ioquatix »

bitexploder wrote: post #245
ioquatix wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a good way to ensure your access to every Google service gets permanently revoked.

Definitely scorched Earth style. There is precedent -- https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.seroundtable.com/amp/archiv... http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/213176

That is so crazy. Sounds like Google really shot themselves in the foot on the PR front here. All over $700 USD.

Re: A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month

#484

Post by abrookewood »

This is why Google continue to lag behind AWS and Azure for cloud services - people live in fear that they will prematurely terminate the service or abruptly change the price without warning. Throw in poor marketing, terrible support and incomplete documentation and they have a perfect recipe for failure. I really wish some senior people over there would get their shit together. I WANT them to be a compelling competitor, but right now they are miles away from being that.

Re: A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month

#485

Post by gigatexal »

mayop100 wrote: post #366

[Firebase Founder here] I’m very sorry for the surprise and frustration experienced by the poster, especially due to problems working with Firebase support. We’re embarrassed by the level of communication on our side, and we’ll be working directly with this developer to resolve the issue. There are a couple of things I’d like to clarify for the group, to help folks understand what happened here, and hopefully help ot…

At the expense of revenue Google could lower the price to before the SSL billing fix to keep developer mindshare. There's at least one viable startup whose whole basis was baked on the 25 bucks a month use case.

Re: A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month

#486

Post by abrookewood »

snomad wrote: post #140
flipp3r wrote: post #14

Reminds me of getting Bait-and-Switch'd by Google App Engine in 2011. From 10's of euros to 1000's. > They have no phone number to contact, no way to dispute this other than email — which they have ignored us for over a month now without replying to our continued requests. Trapped. Doomed. We have no further options. Sounds like Google did a great job with Firebase. Definitely gives you that Google-feel of unresponsi…

> They have no phone number to contact, no way to dispute this other than email — which they have ignored us for over a month now without replying to our continued requests. Trapped. Doomed. We have no further options. I don't understand why the larger internet/tech community keeps giving Google a pass on this. Anything where money comes in or out should ultimately have a support line where ultimately a human custome…

There NOT getting a pass ... I don't know anyone who is willing to bet their business on Google Cloud, but plenty who will do so with AWS and Azure. Google needs to replace whoever is running this section of the business with someone who can emulate what Amazon & Microsoft are doing.

Re: A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month

#487

Post by derefr »

dozzie wrote: post #436
mseebach wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, this approach only works if you're happy to have your service cut off more or less abruptly if your card bounces, something the author of the article explicitly mentions isn't an option. The problem (in the article at least) isn't being surreptitiously billed a large amount, it is cost of a critical service changing dramatically without warning.

> The problem [...] isn't being surreptitiously billed a large amount, it is cost of a critical service changing dramatically without warning. Sorry, but this is the risk of using somebody else's service -- especially Google's -- as a critical component of a business. It may be marvellous for developers not to bother with infrastructure for their own service, but this strategy likes to come back and bite in the ass.

No, this is the risk of using somebody else's service without getting your rates locked in with a contract. You know, a Service Level Agreement? Those things companies used to sign with their hosting providers, before all this IaaS stuff made developers feel like they could "start using now, talk to legal later"?

Re: A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month

#488

Post by dexterdog »

mseebach wrote: post #280
corford wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They won't cut you off immediately and the gain you get is some breathing space/wriggle room to decide what your next step is going to be once you've been landed with a huge, unexpected bill. Also, nothing gets them talking to you faster than a bounced invoice :)

Perhaps. Or perhaps they block or throttle your account. Stopping payment is the nuclear option, you can't expect any cooperation with outstanding payments on your account (not that you necessarily can with a fully paid up account), and your position, if you should choose to pursue legal action, just got a lot more complicated.

I've had an invoiced account with AWS since 2007. We have been 9 months behind on payments at times and they have never suspended the account. Keep a line open with then and they will be reasonable. We are currently current with then but have been behind for more that 2/3 the history of the account.

Re: A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month

#489

Post by derefr »

Macha wrote: post #476
corford wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting! For AWS, DO, Linode etc, I use a debit card with no problem. Edit: just remembered we're using Google's Cloud Vision API and that's billed to the same debit card. So, for UK accounts at least, they take debit cards.

Maybe it's a regional thing? Most banks here (Ireland) issue debit cards by default and most people don't go out of their way to get a credit card, so they'd be cutting off a large chunk of their customer base by banning debit cards.

Are your debit cards really just debit cards (i.e. bank-specific "ATM" or "client" cards), or do they work using credit-card payments infrastructure? If you plugged your Irish bank debit card number into e.g. Stripe as a credit card number, would it take it?

Re: A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month

#490

Post by derefr »

scardine wrote: post #304
moneytalks wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I administer a couple G Suite accounts for small business owner friends purchased direct from Google. G Suite has incredible phone support. I've called 3-4 times over past 5 years and never waited more than 30 seconds to talk to a knowledgeable and capable tech who resolved the issue immediately. No BS troubleshooting steps, just straight to the heart of the issue. I recall a couple Irish guys, one Eastern European a…

G Suite support from Google improved a lot, but for good reasons it is not easy to recover access to an administrator account that was modified to prevent recovery. In a case like this, how support personel can tell a legitimate customer from someone trying to gain access through social engineering? A local reseller can pay you a visit and verify the situation but hands are tied for the friendly Kumar sitting at a he…

> In a case like this, how support personel can tell a legitimate customer from someone trying to gain access through social engineering?

Pretty simple: opt-in KYC. Give people the option to email/fax you their passport or birth certificate or whatever, at any time after they set up their account but before the account is compromised. Extract the relevant ID numbers from the images; then store those numbers, encrypted, the same way you'd store "password recovery" info.

If the account is later compromised on their end, just ask the person attempting to do the recovery to send through the same stuff again, and compare with your recovery fields.

It's essentially the pseudo-biometric, pseudo-"something you have" equivalent of a Secret Question.

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