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I learnt this lesson the hard way. Solution: get a separate debit (not credit!) card for all cloud stuff. Make sure you only transfer enough money on to it each
by corford 9y ago
I learnt this lesson the hard way. Solution: get a separate debit (not credit!) card for all cloud stuff. Make sure you only transfer enough money on to it each month to cover what you reasonably expect your bills to be (and that you can quickly top it up in hours if you legitimately need to).
Worst case, if AWS or Google decide to fuck you over, let the bill bounce. This way you've still got funds on hand to deal with the fall out and some leverage to negotiate a solution.
- daemin 9y agoOr the bank can just automatically give you an overdraft for that amount, add some fees because you accessed that facility, and require you to pay the full amount. After all, they're just being helpful in managing your money and paying your suppliers.
- douche 9y agoThis is why no reasonable person should use debit cards for recurring payments. I'd advise not using debit cards for anything, under any circumstances, and relying on the better protections that credit cards provide, but it's a losing battle. My debit card is ATM-only.
- corford 9y agoYou're right and the trick is setting up a separate account for the debit card (ideally with a different bank). This is generally a good approach for all sorts of reasons, not just protection from over enthusiastic cloud bills. Keep most of your funds in one bank (and never use the cards). Transfer from this account to one or more other accounts with other banks and use the cards on these secondary accounts to pay for things. This way you're protected from suppliers over billing and banks going crazy with unarranged overdrafts (which aren't secured so absolute worst case you just tell them to fuck off and default on it). Basically, the trick is holding on to your cash. Much harder to fix things rapidly if you're having to negotiate with a third party between you and the supplier (which is the case with a credit card company).
- corford 9y agoNot sure who you bank with but our bank will bounce it if honouring it would require going overdrawn beyond €500.
- taneq 9y agoCan you not ask the bank not to do this, though?
- dqv 9y agoYes, you can. The last few banks accounts I've created have all asked if I wanted overdraft protection. You say "NO! decline ANY transaction that would cause an overdraft"
- MichaelGG 9y agoBut they seem to be able to delay debits for several days, perhaps a week? At least on WellsFargo. Isn't this a backdoor/loophole to get around the no overdraft issue?
- specialp 9y agoNow in the USA as of 2012, banks cannot turn on overdraft protection on a debit card unless the customer requests. Prior to this they were taking your day's debits and applying the largest one first. So suppose you bought lunch for $10 and a coffee for $3 then your cable company later in the day billed you for an amount in excess of your account. They would then apply the cable company bill first, then the 2 smaller charges to maximize overdraft fees and hit you with 3 $30 charges.
- danellis 9y agoThe order wouldn't matter in that case, would it? Either way it's still deducting the sum of those three transactions at the end of the day. I thought what they were doing is applying all your debits, charging you if that puts you into overdraft, and then applying any credits. If they applied the credits first, you wouldn't go below zero.
- smeyer 9y agoThe order still matters. If you have $20 in your account and get hit with three debits for $6, $10, and then $30, processing them in order means the $6 and $10 debits go through, leaving you with $4 in the bank, then the $30 debit causes an overdraft and a single fee. Comparatively, processing the $30 debit first immediately causes an overdraft, and the $10 and $6 debits cause two more overdrafts for three total fees. Either way, you're trying to charge $46 against an account with $20, but one method results in 1 fee and one method results in 3 fees. The issue of credits vs debits you mentioned can compound this issue.
- mstade 9y agoI 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 you do this, but I've yet to find one that works globally and is easy to work with.
- corford 9y agoTo be honest, the best way is setting up a completely isolated account with card. If you're extra paranoid, use a different bank for this account.
- _asummers 9y agoTo be honest, this all sounds like it should be a primary bank feature. I should be able to cap a recurring payment at $X for a specific vendor otherwise have it go through automatically.
- princekolt 9y agoNowadays with some banks having virtual cards that you can create/kill at any moment, this sounds like a great idea.
- defined 9y agoI just started using privacy.com and so far it has been an excellent experience. They provide everything my previous VAN-providing CC company did, and more. The one and only downside is that at present, the VAN uses ACH debit to draw immediately any funds used; there's no credit as such (although they are looking into that). EDIT: I have no affiliation with privacy.com; I'm just a satisfied user.
- yeukhon 9y agoI thought either way you get oversrafted fee or at least in the case of a debit card unless the card comes with a cap limit.
- mseebach 9y agoOf 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.
- corford 9y agoThey 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 :)
- mseebach 9y agoPerhaps. 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.
- corford 9y agoTo be clear, the only time any of this matters is when a huge, unexpected bill arrives. Day to day, you should anticipate any big, legitimate bills and make sure funds are there to settle them (or you scale back usage to avoid getting smacked). It's when a big bill lands in error or is introduced sneakily that having a separate "cloud only card" can save you. In that case, it's the supplier that's gone nuclear and you're just responding in kind.
- mseebach 9y agoSure, but that's just not what we're discussing here. The author of the original article clearly authorised the increased spend (but obviously not the sudden change causing it), and could have declined (presumably at the cost of having his app throttled or shut down). Nothing about a "cloud only card" would have changed his situation the least.
- curiousgal 9y agoGoogle's ahead of you on that one. They don't accept debit cards. (At least the last time I tried with Google Cloud)
- corford 9y agoInteresting! 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.
- Macha 9y agoMaybe 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.
- derefr 9y agoAre 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?
- Macha 9y agoMost are visa debit. I think one bank issues a bank specific bank, or at least did a few years ago.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- brazzledazzle 9y agoDoes your debit card have a credit card number?
- danellis 9y ago
- rmykhajliw 9y agoGoogle stopped accepting my Debit card a year ago! Even after 14 months of calls / emails the issue is still here. I don't have other options rather than throw Google Cloud to the garbage bin (where actually it live).
- stephenr 9y agoMy preferred VPS provider (and DNS provider) both accept wire transfers, no card required.
- rhodysurf 9y agoFor Google Cloud can't you set a billing limit for it to not exceed? That's what I have done but I have not come close to exceeeding it yet so IDK if there is something I am missing.
- corford 9y agoShould be fine I think providing there are no circumstances where Google can decide to ignore the limit (don't have much experience with their cloud stuff).
- matrix 9y agoI think these billing limits only apply to AppEngine services.
- rhodysurf 9y agoAhh I think you are right. Just checked and you can set limits for App engine, but there are budgets in Google Cloud which is confusing and doesn't seem like it actually limits anything, it just keeps you notified of how much you are spending relative to your budget
- alasdair_ 9y agoYou can. Beware though! It can take 24 hours to increase the limit - horrible if you get a sudden spike in traffic from, say, a techcrunch post or something.
- Moru 9y agoIn Sweden we have at least one bank that has e-cards where you can set up a new card for each transaction. You decide how long it is valid in months and for how much total and recieve a unique card number and ccv. I have been using this at least 15 years for payments online. You set it up, make the payment and then immediately close the card again if you want to be extra safe.
- gondo 9y agowhat is the bank name if i may ask?
- rhblake 9y agoSwedbank has provided this service for many years (https://www.swedbank.se/privat/kort-och-betalningar/kort/logga-in-e-kort/ https://www.swedbank.se/privat/kort-och-betalningar/kort/log...). You could also use one of the many independent sparbanker affiliated with Swedbank (they use Swedbank's platform).
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- sync 9y agoFinal is doing a take on this as well for the US: https://getfinal.com/ https://getfinal.com/
- RangerScience 9y agoI like the look of Final, but $50/year seem pretty pricey for a credit card. Why's it worth it?
- comex 9y agoThere's also Privacy: https://privacy.com https://privacy.com
- GavinMcG 9y agoCitibank does this as well, at least with my credit card.
- traviswingo 9y agoYeah. This is where something like Final[1] would be super helpful. 1. https://getfinal.com https://getfinal.com
- Geezus42 9y agoprivacy.com
- mozinator 9y agoNope, debit card is not allowed
- lucb1e 9y agoWon't they legally force you into paying (assuming everything they did was legal)?
- _jal 9y agoThis is excellent advice. In general, I've personally imported lessons about accounting controls I learned running a company to personal finance. Yes, it is a pain. But Paypal, for instance, can only empty a bank account that is used for nothing else, any service like this (open-ended liabilities with shitty/no support) is isolated to debit cards, etc. Nobody gets permission to charge open-ended amounts to credit cards, and nobody gets automation rights to the "real" bank accounts, period. There's a business model here somewhere for someone to automate all of this. It involves substantially more time to keep organized than my prior two-banks/two-credit cards model. Personal finance apps just aren't designed to treat, for instance, debit cards as transient. As others note, sure, services that do something like this can still come after you. But who has the money in their pocket right now matters a lot when resolving disputes like this.