<story><title>A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month</title><url>https://medium.com/@contact_16315/firebase-costs-increased-by-7-000-81dc0a27271d</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mgkimsal</author><text>&amp;gt; It really is appalling&lt;p&gt;Never quite understood what&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;appalling&amp;quot; about it.  They&amp;#x27;ve &lt;i&gt;never&lt;/i&gt; had strong support for any dev&amp;#x2F;cloud-oriented services.  I know some folks who&amp;#x27;ve had &lt;i&gt;good experiences&lt;/i&gt;, but those were exceptions, not the rule.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ll say, I get the frustration with it, but it&amp;#x27;s why I&amp;#x27;ve never considered using their cloud services for anything.  I had a client who asked me to migrate all their stuff to google &amp;#x27;cloud compute&amp;#x27; and their &amp;#x27;sql cloud&amp;#x27; offering last year.  It was a performance disaster; queries that were minor .1ms on localhost or in the same network were suddenly 18-20ms hitting google cloud.  Spent a few days trying to dig in, and a few responses from various groups were &amp;quot;shouldn&amp;#x27;t be that slow&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;works for me&amp;quot; and that was about it.  Gave up trying to get any real response from google (we may have got a &amp;#x27;looking in to it&amp;#x27; response - I don&amp;#x27;t remember).&lt;p&gt;Thing was, I knew going in it wasn&amp;#x27;t going to end well, I just wasn&amp;#x27;t sure exactly why (maybe that&amp;#x27;s just too cynical of a view, but I prefer &amp;#x27;realistic&amp;#x27;).</text></item><item><author>mstade</author><text>&amp;gt; I bet they also have a &amp;quot;community&amp;quot; support forum or Google Group full of helpless people talking to a virtual wall.&lt;p&gt;This is Google support summed up perfectly in a single sentence. It really is appalling.</text></item><item><author>flipp3r</author><text>Reminds me of getting Bait-and-Switch&amp;#x27;d by Google App Engine in 2011. From 10&amp;#x27;s of euros to 1000&amp;#x27;s.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; They have no phone number to contact, no way to dispute this other than email — which they have ignored us for over a month now without replying to our continued requests. Trapped. Doomed. We have no further options.&lt;p&gt;Sounds like Google did a great job with Firebase. Definitely gives you that Google-feel of unresponsive support and no hope when you have problems with any of their services. I bet they also have a &amp;quot;community&amp;quot; support forum or Google Group full of helpless people talking to a virtual wall. (Edit: Yep, they recommend Stack Overflow, Quora, and then their Google Group.. lol. Some things never change)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mstade</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think it&amp;#x27;s fair you&amp;#x27;re being down voted, I get your point of view, so I gave you an upvote. But the thing is, this isn&amp;#x27;t some kid-in-a-basement free-but-ad-supported service where you-get-what-you-pay-for. Google&amp;#x27;s cloud offering isn&amp;#x27;t free (for any use beyond hello world anyway) and as a paying customer I&amp;#x27;d expect:&lt;p&gt;1. Things to work
2. People to answer when things don&amp;#x27;t work
3. Things to start working again in a timely manner, with timely and concise updates along the way&lt;p&gt;Points two and three carry a lot of nuance, but Google&amp;#x27;s support does not. It&amp;#x27;s a virtual wall that people cry to and get no response back from, except for the rare few occasions when the Google deities decide to grace forums or mailing lists with their presence. It&amp;#x27;s just not a serious offering.&lt;p&gt;Now, you can pay extra for support, but even so it&amp;#x27;s going to be appalling. You probably will get to talk to someone at least, but in my experience you rarely get ahold of anyone who&amp;#x27;ll actually read what you&amp;#x27;ve sent them, much less actually try to help.&lt;p&gt;My take away is that support and customer service is just not a priority for Google, what so ever. It&amp;#x27;s not even a low priority thing, it&amp;#x27;s a &lt;i&gt;no&lt;/i&gt; priority thing.</text></comment>
<story><title>A startup’s Firebase bill suddenly increased from $25 to $1750 per month</title><url>https://medium.com/@contact_16315/firebase-costs-increased-by-7-000-81dc0a27271d</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mgkimsal</author><text>&amp;gt; It really is appalling&lt;p&gt;Never quite understood what&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;appalling&amp;quot; about it.  They&amp;#x27;ve &lt;i&gt;never&lt;/i&gt; had strong support for any dev&amp;#x2F;cloud-oriented services.  I know some folks who&amp;#x27;ve had &lt;i&gt;good experiences&lt;/i&gt;, but those were exceptions, not the rule.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ll say, I get the frustration with it, but it&amp;#x27;s why I&amp;#x27;ve never considered using their cloud services for anything.  I had a client who asked me to migrate all their stuff to google &amp;#x27;cloud compute&amp;#x27; and their &amp;#x27;sql cloud&amp;#x27; offering last year.  It was a performance disaster; queries that were minor .1ms on localhost or in the same network were suddenly 18-20ms hitting google cloud.  Spent a few days trying to dig in, and a few responses from various groups were &amp;quot;shouldn&amp;#x27;t be that slow&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;works for me&amp;quot; and that was about it.  Gave up trying to get any real response from google (we may have got a &amp;#x27;looking in to it&amp;#x27; response - I don&amp;#x27;t remember).&lt;p&gt;Thing was, I knew going in it wasn&amp;#x27;t going to end well, I just wasn&amp;#x27;t sure exactly why (maybe that&amp;#x27;s just too cynical of a view, but I prefer &amp;#x27;realistic&amp;#x27;).</text></item><item><author>mstade</author><text>&amp;gt; I bet they also have a &amp;quot;community&amp;quot; support forum or Google Group full of helpless people talking to a virtual wall.&lt;p&gt;This is Google support summed up perfectly in a single sentence. It really is appalling.</text></item><item><author>flipp3r</author><text>Reminds me of getting Bait-and-Switch&amp;#x27;d by Google App Engine in 2011. From 10&amp;#x27;s of euros to 1000&amp;#x27;s.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; They have no phone number to contact, no way to dispute this other than email — which they have ignored us for over a month now without replying to our continued requests. Trapped. Doomed. We have no further options.&lt;p&gt;Sounds like Google did a great job with Firebase. Definitely gives you that Google-feel of unresponsive support and no hope when you have problems with any of their services. I bet they also have a &amp;quot;community&amp;quot; support forum or Google Group full of helpless people talking to a virtual wall. (Edit: Yep, they recommend Stack Overflow, Quora, and then their Google Group.. lol. Some things never change)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>elorant</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s appalling because you&amp;#x27;re a paying customer. I can understand free services not having support, but any service that&amp;#x27;s costing money should at the very least have a human being responding through email.</text></comment>