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Warning – Google suspended GCP services for 'verification', lost my business

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Warning – Google suspended GCP services for 'verification', lost my business

#1

Post by alirsgp »

I operate multiple apps which were providing my entire livelihood, and I wake up one day to realize it's all gone.

Long story short, Google froze my Google Pay account which is used to pay for anything related to Google services, including GCP. This was done as they need to temporarily suspend me to 'verify' me. The GCP team couldn't help me since it was an issue with Google Pay. Not to mention their chat support is useless and doesn't have any power to look into cases.

Now I login to find out my Google Pay account is 'temporarily suspended' since I need to verify my account. I go ahead and add my drivers license and fill out their form, but while they verify details they suspend your ability to pay for any Google services.

So now I can't pay for GCP usage (firebase) and all my authentication, database, cloud functions, are all not usable since the service is suspended. Unlike Amazon who offers phone lines for resolving billing issues, Google does no such thing. I wish I chose AWS.

The end result is that I have apps I spent years of my life building and which currently feed me to only be rendered unusable because some AI at google thought my Google Pay needed additional verification.

My whole life has done a 180 in the past week. I feel like I'm a man with literally nothing to lose and I can't live with myself anymore. This hurts much more than losing a job for me.

Please stay far, far away from Google services of any kind. They are by far the worst of the big tech companies when it comes to developer support.

Re: Warning – Google suspended GCP services for 'verification', lost my business

#2

Post by Aeolun »

Yeah, that sounds about par for the course for Google.

I don’t understand why anyone would ever choose them for anything critical.

Free support for AWS is better than anything Google has (at least based on my reading, for obvious reasons I have no first-hand experience).

Re: Warning – Google suspended GCP services for 'verification', lost my business

#3

Post by nonrandomstring »

This is really sad. I feel bad for you and hope you manage to rebuild your base somewhere else safe - hopefully with technology that you control.

You won't be the last person to get screwed over by the callous machinery of dehumanised big-tech (AWS or Microsoft would be no better, sadly I think you are rationalising loss). We must all wake up to just how horribly precarious the lives of ordinary people are against the arbitrary whim of opaque, unassailable power centres that masquerade as "Free services".

Re: Warning – Google suspended GCP services for 'verification', lost my business

#5

Post by ilyt »

It's sad none (I think?) of the big cloud providers doesn't allow for prepaid account, it would solve both "our idiots thought that blocking long-term paying customers with no human intervention is a good idea" and "I woke up this morning with $20k AWS bill" problems

Re: Warning – Google suspended GCP services for 'verification', lost my business

#6

Post by twawaaay »

> I wish I chose AWS.

Well... AWS has better support IMO (like actual people you can talk to).

But I still chose to not tie myself to any of these platforms for anything critical. It requires additional upfront effort, but I can migrate all my applications off of AWS in a moment.

There is no easy way around Google and Apple when it comes to your app staying available, but I am trying to minimise any chances I could be flagged for anything (basically not linking those accounts to any other services).

Re: Warning – Google suspended GCP services for 'verification', lost my business

#7

Post by dmitrygr »

Same thing happened to me: “suspended, need extra verification” after YEARS of the account existing just fine. Nothing helped. Not doing what they asked (multiple photos of photo id), not emailing, nor calling support.

I ended up calling an ex-coworker who still worked at google. He sent an internal email. It was resolved the same day. I never found out what the issue was.

Don’t use google for anything you care about, unless you maintain close friendships with googlers.

Re: Warning – Google suspended GCP services for 'verification', lost my business

#9

Post by tracerbulletx »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #3

This is really sad. I feel bad for you and hope you manage to rebuild your base somewhere else safe - hopefully with technology that you control. You won't be the last person to get screwed over by the callous machinery of dehumanised big-tech (AWS or Microsoft would be no better, sadly I think you are rationalising loss). We must all wake up to just how horribly precarious the lives of ordinary people are against th…

I don't have the statistics to back up any statement about the odds that one provider or another is safer, but AWS has had a person I could talk to and they really resolved my issues and seemed empowered to do so. That's a big and real difference.

Re: Warning – Google suspended GCP services for 'verification', lost my business

#10

Post by throwaway892238 »

Google locked our company out of using our own domain on Google Workspaces because a former employee had signed up for a Workspace account using our domain, and we had no way to recover it. We literally manage our domain in GCP but they wouldn't accept that we own our own domain and thus won't let us use our domain with Workspaces, which screws you out of a lot of Google functionality. Never seen a company that was too incompetent to allow users to use its own product and make zero attempt to solve the customer's problem.

Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said "We need scale to be profitable." No, you need to stop treating your customers like crap to be profitable. We don't trust you, you are a pain in our asses, and we have alternatives, so there is really no need for us to spend our money on you. It's now a matter of when we all move to AWS and Azure, not if.

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