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Netlify just sent me a $104k bill for a simple static site

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Re: Netlify just sent me a $104k bill for a simple static site

#531

Post by charles_f »

bobfunk wrote: post #351
aurareturn wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are only two questions everyone have: 1. Would Netlify forgive the bill if this didn't go viral? 2. How do you plan to address this issue so that it never happens again? Everyone here knew someone from Netlify would come and say OP wouldn't have to pay. That was a given. Now we want to know the important answers.

1. Yes. We've forgiven lots and lots of bills over the last 9 years and they haven't gone viral 2. While I've always favored erring towards keeping people's sites up we are currently working on changing the default behavior to never let free sites incur overages

> 1. Yes. We've forgiven lots and lots of bills over the last 9 years and they haven't gone viral

Sequence of events doesn't support this answer:

1. User gets charged 100k

2. User complains to support

3. User receives discount to 20k, then 5k. Support states policy is normally 20k

4. User discloses to the world. Goes viral.

5. Invoice is forgiven

While you might forgive "lots and lots", fact is that you still presented the invoice to a free tier customer, and when they complained you gave them a discount, but still charge. Only when it went viral did you forgive it.

Re: Netlify just sent me a $104k bill for a simple static site

#532

Post by gwright »

aurareturn wrote: post #500
raiyu wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We did this at DigitalOcean for similar reasons, wasn't a feature that was commonly used. Additionally, when you set that limit people then get upset because usually when they go over it for a good reason, like going viral, they aren't anticipating it, and just when their traffic is most valuable the site is down. What Netlify is doing here is really the best approach for both parties. And typically speaking a $104k…

Additionally, when you set that limit people then get upset because usually when they go over it for a good reason, like going viral, they aren't anticipating it, and just when their traffic is most valuable the site is down. But that's on the user. The user shouldn't get upset in that scenario and has no right to. You're giving the control back to the user.

> But that's on the user. The user shouldn't get upset in that scenario and has no right to.

I agree. I also agree that when dealing with large numbers of people, there will be people who don't understand this and/or will actively try to social engineer their way out of their own decisions.

Setting customer expectations and meeting them successfully isn't easy.

Re: Netlify just sent me a $104k bill for a simple static site

#533

Post by SoftTalker »

I once got a $65,000 water bill from the city for one month. I laughed and called them and asked them to re-read the meter and correct it, and expected a quick resolution. But no, they insisted it was correct for some time and that I needed to pay it. They said I probably had a leaky faucet or running toilet.

There was no awareness on the part of the customer service people how ridiculous that was. It would be physically impossible for my service pipe to deliver that volume of water even if it had been running full open for the entire month. I kept escalating until I reached someone who agreed, and they sent someone out to re-read the meter. And my bill was reduced to about $35.00, the normal amount.

Front line customer support isn't always very in tune with what is sensible for a given customer's account.

Re: Netlify just sent me a $104k bill for a simple static site

#535

Post by [deleted] »

aurareturn wrote: post #374
prmoustache wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The very fact that you expect that making front page of hn will make them cancel that bill means that it will soon be over. These kind of stories (alongside cancelled accounts) repeat over and over again and will soon become so not newsworthy that they will either not end up in front page, nor people will check on the eventual outcome which means these companies will get away with not moving a finger.

Nah. I think the dev community has long memory. Events like this is damaging for years. Whenever Netlify is mentioned, someone will inevitably point to this thread for a few years.

[deleted]

Re: Netlify just sent me a $104k bill for a simple static site

#536

Post by karaterobot »

jari_mustonen wrote: post #342
bobfunk wrote: post #317

Netlify CEO here. Our support team has reached out to the user from the thread to let them know they're not getting charged for this. It's currently our policy to not shut down free sites during traffic spikes that doesn't match attack patterns, but instead forgiving any bills from legitimate mistakes after the fact. Apologies that this didn't come through in the initial support reply.

"Current policy?" So, you will retain a right to change such fees when you feel like it. This is a serious matter. We are building a new site for our company with Netlify, but we can't open ourselves to this predatory practice. And even if you do not mean to be predatory, even the option of such is enough. If not resolved with a clean, legally binding promise, our company (and probably quite a few others) must move o…

> "Current policy?" So, you will retain a right to change such fees when you feel like it.

Is that unreasonable?

Re: Netlify just sent me a $104k bill for a simple static site

#537

Post by boringg »

SoftTalker wrote: post #533

I once got a $65,000 water bill from the city for one month. I laughed and called them and asked them to re-read the meter and correct it, and expected a quick resolution. But no, they insisted it was correct for some time and that I needed to pay it. They said I probably had a leaky faucet or running toilet. There was no awareness on the part of the customer service people how ridiculous that was. It would be physic…

To be fair to front line support -- a lot of times it's just a warm body reading a script and it's paid accordingly.

Not always - but a lot of the times, especially for lower quality companies.

Re: Netlify just sent me a $104k bill for a simple static site

#538

Post by pants2 »

op00to wrote: post #426
bobfunk wrote: post #317

Netlify CEO here. Our support team has reached out to the user from the thread to let them know they're not getting charged for this. It's currently our policy to not shut down free sites during traffic spikes that doesn't match attack patterns, but instead forgiving any bills from legitimate mistakes after the fact. Apologies that this didn't come through in the initial support reply.

I’d rather be shut down than have a heart attack from a $100k bill. That could literally kill me from stress, even if you pinky swear to refund any oopsies.

See the Robinhood user who committed suicide after misunderstanding his liabilities from selling options.

Re: Netlify just sent me a $104k bill for a simple static site

#539

Post by jcalx »

valine wrote: post #349
bobfunk wrote: post #317

Netlify CEO here. Our support team has reached out to the user from the thread to let them know they're not getting charged for this. It's currently our policy to not shut down free sites during traffic spikes that doesn't match attack patterns, but instead forgiving any bills from legitimate mistakes after the fact. Apologies that this didn't come through in the initial support reply.

I’ve been a netlify user since 2017 and I just deleted all my sites. I can’t risk receiving a $100k bill for toy projects. Your “current policy” is not good enough.

Same. I will (almost certainly) never incur a $104k bill, but switching to Cloudfare Pages looks free and I don't want to depend on unwritten policies of goodwill to mitigate the potential risk.

Re: Netlify just sent me a $104k bill for a simple static site

#540

Post by kyledrake »

"190TB in 4 days"

That's approximately one month of transit through a gigabit connection, which indeed could be pretty expensive. Even at IP transit prices it would be something like $300/mo for a 1GB connection via HE but you would need something bigger to handle this traffic. I pay about $2k at bulk for that amount of bandwidth. Any way you cut it, you're getting some sort of bill (or kicked off) for that without some sort of ddos forgiveness.

That said, $104k feels excessive to me for static hosting ($0.57/gb, did I do that right?).

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