Of 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.
They 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 :)
Perhaps. 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.
To 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.
Sure, 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.
Totally agree. If he/she authorised it after being given an opportunity to decline then, yes, it's absolutely on them. /me clearly didn't read the article ;)
I've had an invoiced account with AWS since 2007. We have been 9 months behind on payments at times and they have never suspended the account. Keep a line open with then and they will be reasonable. We are currently current with then but have been behind for more that 2/3 the history of the account.
> The problem [...] isn't being surreptitiously billed a large amount, it is cost of a critical service changing dramatically without warning.
Sorry, but this is the risk of using somebody else's service -- especially
Google's -- as a critical component of a business. It may be marvellous for
developers not to bother with infrastructure for their own service, but this
strategy likes to come back and bite in the ass.
You always have to use someone else's service - even if it's just the electricty supply. But different services come with different risks, and you have to try to gauge them.
No, this is the risk of using somebody else's service without getting your rates locked in with a contract. You know, a Service Level Agreement? Those things companies used to sign with their hosting providers, before all this IaaS stuff made developers feel like they could "start using now, talk to legal later"?
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.