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You know this reminds me of a bad taste that Google Sales team left when I asked for some of my billing that I was unaware of running after following a quicksta
by w_s_l 7y ago
You know this reminds me of a bad taste that Google Sales team left when I asked for some of my billing that I was unaware of running after following a quickstart guide.
AWS refunded me in the first reply on the same day!
GCP sales rep just copy pasted a link to a self support survey that essentially told me, after a series of YES or NO questions that they can't refund me.
So why not just tell your customers like it is? Google Cloud is super strict when it comes to billing. I have called my bank to do a chargeback and put a hold on all future billing with GCP.
I'm now back to AWS and still on a Free Tier. Apparently the $300 Trial with Google Cloud did not include some critical products, AWS Free tier makes it super clear and even still I sometimes leave something running on and discover it in my invoice....
I've yet to receive a reply from Google and its been a week now.
I do appreciate other products such as Firebase but honestly for infrastructure and for future integration with enterprise customers I feel AWS is more appropriate and mature.
- WC3w6pXxgGd 7y agoAnything created in-house at Google (GCP) is typically created by technically-proficient devs, those devs then leave the project to start something new and maintenance is left to interns and new hires. Google customer service basically doesn't care and also has no tools at their disposal to fix any issues anyway. The infinite money spout that is Google Ads has created a situation in which devs are at Google just to have fun - there really is no incentive to maintain anything because the money will flow regardless of quality. Source: I interned at Google.
- marcinzm 7y agoIsn't it also that promotions at Google are based on creating new products/projects rather than maintaining existing ones? So engineers have a negative incentive to maintain things since it costs them promotions.
- xkcd-sucks 7y agoThat explains the proliferation of chat services and why they all get actively worse over time until they're replaced
- kerng 7y agoI'm not sure why you are downvoted - seems like a reasonable insight and explanation for the drop in quality and weird decisions Google is making recently.
- enneff 7y agoIt’s not insightful at all. Just one intern’s very brief observations of something way more complicated and nuanced than is deserving of such a dismissive comment.
- marcinzm 7y agoI'll take brief comments that shed partial light on something over no comments at all and no insight at all.
- ganeshkrishnan 7y agoI have mentioned this multiple time: Any criticism of Google is met with barrage of downvotes. I guess all the googlers hang around here and they are usually commenting with throwaways.
- rum3 7y agoGoogle seems to be sort of like a sect of narcissists.
- panopticon 7y agoFrom what I’ve been told, the issue is that the people with political capital (managers, PMs, etc) are quick to move after successful launches and milestones. No matter how many competent engineers hang around, the product/team becomes resource and attention starved.
- espeed 7y agoWhat was the quickstart guide?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- mcintyre1994 7y agoThe thing that worries me most about Google Cloud and these billing stories is that I’m assuming if you chargeback or block them at your bank then they’ll ban all Google accounts of yours - and they’re obviously going to be able to make the link between an account made just for Google Cloud and my real account.
- ganeshkrishnan 7y agoThey WILL absolutely block and suspend all accounts indefinitely. They have terminated accounts for credit card failing transactions. I really wanted to try out their new autoML but I was paranoid of entering my credit card and getting banned from Google
- w_s_l 7y agooh man....so ALL of my gmail gets banned? this is FUCKED. its aking to holding my youtube and google play accounts hostage.
- broknbottle 7y agoall your bases belong to us.
- londons_explore 7y agoFor any Google service with billing, always set up an entirely new account, in incognito mode, without using the same recovery phone number or email address. That way Google won't ban your main account for non-payment. It's the only way, especially considering Google cloud has no functionality to cap spending.
- dillonmckay 7y agoThey will link the accounts by IP (and other fingerprinting), and you will get banned.
- 7y ago
- kerng 7y agoGoogle is well known for not caring about small shops, only if you are a multi million dollar customer with dedicated account manager you can expect reasonable support. That's been the case forever with them.
- fredthomsen 7y agoDoes Amazon treat smaller customers any better? I am genuinely asking, as I have no clue.
- rexarex 7y agoYes
- k__ 7y agoDepends. AWS is mostly easy going. Only some people at the partner programm can vary. I had a guy who wanted to help me out even tho I was just a one person shop. After he left I got a woman who threw me out of the program faster than I could look.
- 0x54D5 7y agoIf you buy their support (which isn't that expensive). Holy fuck it's good. You literally have an infrastructure support engineer on the phone for hours with you. They will literally show you how to spend less money for your hosting while using more AWS services.
- tedivm 7y agoAbsolutely. I've seen them wipe a number of bills away for companies that have screwed up something. They definitely take a longer view on customer happiness than GCP. Azure also tends to be pretty good in this regard.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- xtracto 7y ago
- bscphil 7y ago>I asked for some of my billing that I was unaware of running >I have called my bank to do a chargeback You're issuing a chargeback because you made a mistake and spent someone else's resources? And you're admitting to this on HN? I'm not a lawyer, but that sounds like fraud and / or theft to me.
- prepend 7y agoIt’s not, read the terms of your credit card. It’s basically “I didn’t intend to buy this. I tried in good faith to contact the merchant for return and support. I was ignored. I’m contacting you.” It’s pretty convenient for companies like Comcast and Google that have poor customer service.
- bscphil 7y agoImagine leaving a 1000 watt space heater on by accident in a spare room for a month, then trying to get a "refund" from the power company because you "didn't intend" to purchase all that power you used. That's effectively what this is - signing a service agreement and forgetting to turn off a service you don't need, causing an irreversible loss of resources. You're not entitled to a refund for a service you agreed to pay for and actually used, just because you forgot about it.
- prepend 7y agoMy power company will literally give you a refund for this if you call them. I don’t think I’m entitled to a refund, but good customer service gives me one. Of course, I get one free pass at that and if I did it over and over, I’m hosed. The difference is that my utility is regulated and has a phone number and a human whose job it is to talk to all customers.
- Can_Not 7y agoGCE charged me for "Chinese egress" but doesn't provide me a way to block China via firewall or other methods. They have the ability to check and bill me for it but if I want to use the same logic for a firewall rule I'm on my own. That sounds like theft and or fraud to me. OP sounds like they're just defending their selves from ambiguous draconian billing robots.
- lucb1e 7y agoAre you seriously complaining about having to pay for using their resources? I understand that you're surprised some things aren't covered in the free trial or free credit or whatever, but getting $300 free already sounded a little too good to be true (I heard about it from a friend and was dubious; at least in Europe, consumers are told not to enter deals that are too good to be true), you could at least have checked what you're actually getting. I think it's weird to say you get credit in dollars and then not be able to spend it on everything. That's not how money works. But that's the way hosting providers work and afaik it's quite well known. Especially with a large sum of "free money", even if it's not well known, it was on you to check any small print.
- mcherm 7y ago> Are you seriously complaining about having to pay for using their resources? I didn't read it that way. I thought they were complaining about poor customer service that made it difficult to understand the bill or respond to it appropriately.
- pas 7y agoI read it that way too, but it's sort of understandable that a free tier user is not going to get the same "customer care" as someone who regularly leaves let's say 50K USD with them.