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It's really awesome that Amazon was reasonable and refunded the charges because they were accidental. I mean, technically it was still your fault, so it would h

It's really awesome that Amazon was reasonable and refunded the charges because they were accidental. I mean, technically it was still your fault, so it would have been easy for them to be jerks about it.

sohn 15y ago
They wouldn't be jerks if they asked for the charges; you still generated the traffic and they had to pay for it.
- EvilTerran 15y ago
  Just as "legal" does not mean "ethical", "contractually permitted" does not mean "not a jerk move".
  - jmj42 15y ago
    just like asking you to pay for the services you used is not a jerk move. Amazon did a nice thing, but the services were used. Asking to user to pay for those services (even if it was a mistake), would not have been a "jerk move"
    - Karunamon 15y ago
      Bandwidth pricing is a funny thing, in that it's only metered because it's convenient to do so. You haven't consumed any kind of finite resource by moving 1GB or 1000GB. There isn't any "use". And it makes good business sense besides. They can let the guy off and eat the probably less than a hundred or so bandwidth this guy actually cost them due to their upstream providers, get a good writeup and look better as a result, ..or kill his account, take him to collections, etc, etc, etc, (which would probably cost them more than $1K anyways), and lose a customer and get a PR black eye while they're at it. So yeah, it would be a jerk move, and a pretty dumb one at that.
      - icebraining 15y ago
        You've consumed energy. But in any case, even if in theory nothing is used, are you sure that Amazon doesn't have to pay for it too? Because then it's irrelevant whether it was really used or not.
        Karunamon 15y ago
        Not $1,000 worth in either case.
        icebraining 15y ago
        Are you taking in account the time spent by the tech person(s) to read his email and process the rebates? People time is expensive, particularly if some manager needs to approve it. Maybe it wouldn't be $1000, but it'd still be significantly more than $0.
        Karunamon 15y ago
        We're not counting rebates yet - we're saying "This guy ran X amount of bandwidth through our system which we normally charge Y for" - how much did Amazon pay their upstream for that bandwidth and the billing (which is all completely automated)
        icebraining 15y ago
        That's my point: if you want them to charge less, the billing for this case is not automated (and is thus much more expensive).
        Karunamon 15y ago
        I'd be flabbergasted to find out their billing system isn't at least as simple as their AWS console. 5 minutes of CSR work tops. Would probably even be easier to completely drop a bill as opposed to modifying it to charge a lesser amount.
    - Panos 15y ago
      Amazon was genuinely nice in this case. I had no expectation that they would refund the charges. It was a self-inflicted wound and Amazon had no obligation to pay for my own stupidity.
    - prebrov 15y ago
      I'd expect Amazon and Google to peer directly within US territory, one being a major byte-generator and another one being the largest byte-sucker. So this traffic must be almost as cheap as Amazon's own intra-territory exchange. Probably that's why they were being so nice. They probably are even somewhat happy to generate some more traffic directly for Google as the ratio is usually a leverage for the network guys. But, surely, it's still very cool of them to drop the customer's bill. I wonder, though, how was one ever to know that Google stripped their feedfetcher of even the basics of "intellect" and allowed one single spreadsheet to generate incoming 250 gigs hourly while not being open. So, after all it's Amazon's and Google poor designs that hammered the guy and a common business sense for Amazon to let it go for the customer and just study the case together with Google.
  - tripzilch 15y ago
    Nor does failing "to be really nice" equal "jerk move". Offering the refund was really nice. Asking to pay for the services would not have been a jerk move, because Amazon wasn't responsible for the extra costs either. I usually root for the little guy, but in this case, if anyone else might be expected to foot the bill, it should be Google for building a system that needlessly slurps 250GB/h without any apparent capping or rate-limiting, caused by a single spreadsheet. Just because Amazon S3 is huge and probably doesn't feel a thing doesn't mean it's a good idea, what if it were 500 spreadsheets doing this? What if that FeederBot were to gorge itself onto one Google's own CDNs? Sure it's probably just a drop in the ocean for Google as well, but I bet they'd rather not experience this "minor inefficiency".
- gscott 15y ago
  It's possible Google and Amazon have a peering arrangement so they may have paid little to nothing for the traffic.

sohn 15y ago

They wouldn't be jerks if they asked for the charges; you still generated the traffic and they had to pay for it.

EvilTerran 15y ago
Just as "legal" does not mean "ethical", "contractually permitted" does not mean "not a jerk move".
- jmj42 15y ago
  just like asking you to pay for the services you used is not a jerk move. Amazon did a nice thing, but the services were used. Asking to user to pay for those services (even if it was a mistake), would not have been a "jerk move"
  - Karunamon 15y ago
    Bandwidth pricing is a funny thing, in that it's only metered because it's convenient to do so. You haven't consumed any kind of finite resource by moving 1GB or 1000GB. There isn't any "use". And it makes good business sense besides. They can let the guy off and eat the probably less than a hundred or so bandwidth this guy actually cost them due to their upstream providers, get a good writeup and look better as a result, ..or kill his account, take him to collections, etc, etc, etc, (which would probably cost them more than $1K anyways), and lose a customer and get a PR black eye while they're at it. So yeah, it would be a jerk move, and a pretty dumb one at that.
    - icebraining 15y ago
      You've consumed energy. But in any case, even if in theory nothing is used, are you sure that Amazon doesn't have to pay for it too? Because then it's irrelevant whether it was really used or not.
      - Karunamon 15y ago
        Not $1,000 worth in either case.
        icebraining 15y ago
        Are you taking in account the time spent by the tech person(s) to read his email and process the rebates? People time is expensive, particularly if some manager needs to approve it. Maybe it wouldn't be $1000, but it'd still be significantly more than $0.
        Karunamon 15y ago
        We're not counting rebates yet - we're saying "This guy ran X amount of bandwidth through our system which we normally charge Y for" - how much did Amazon pay their upstream for that bandwidth and the billing (which is all completely automated)
        icebraining 15y ago
        That's my point: if you want them to charge less, the billing for this case is not automated (and is thus much more expensive).
        Karunamon 15y ago
        I'd be flabbergasted to find out their billing system isn't at least as simple as their AWS console. 5 minutes of CSR work tops. Would probably even be easier to completely drop a bill as opposed to modifying it to charge a lesser amount.
  - Panos 15y ago
    Amazon was genuinely nice in this case. I had no expectation that they would refund the charges. It was a self-inflicted wound and Amazon had no obligation to pay for my own stupidity.
  - prebrov 15y ago
    I'd expect Amazon and Google to peer directly within US territory, one being a major byte-generator and another one being the largest byte-sucker. So this traffic must be almost as cheap as Amazon's own intra-territory exchange. Probably that's why they were being so nice. They probably are even somewhat happy to generate some more traffic directly for Google as the ratio is usually a leverage for the network guys. But, surely, it's still very cool of them to drop the customer's bill. I wonder, though, how was one ever to know that Google stripped their feedfetcher of even the basics of "intellect" and allowed one single spreadsheet to generate incoming 250 gigs hourly while not being open. So, after all it's Amazon's and Google poor designs that hammered the guy and a common business sense for Amazon to let it go for the customer and just study the case together with Google.
- tripzilch 15y ago
  Nor does failing "to be really nice" equal "jerk move". Offering the refund was really nice. Asking to pay for the services would not have been a jerk move, because Amazon wasn't responsible for the extra costs either. I usually root for the little guy, but in this case, if anyone else might be expected to foot the bill, it should be Google for building a system that needlessly slurps 250GB/h without any apparent capping or rate-limiting, caused by a single spreadsheet. Just because Amazon S3 is huge and probably doesn't feel a thing doesn't mean it's a good idea, what if it were 500 spreadsheets doing this? What if that FeederBot were to gorge itself onto one Google's own CDNs? Sure it's probably just a drop in the ocean for Google as well, but I bet they'd rather not experience this "minor inefficiency".
gscott 15y ago
It's possible Google and Amazon have a peering arrangement so they may have paid little to nothing for the traffic.