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Google Cloud Platforms – Shameful

86 points by ifemide06 ↗ HN
So we recently concluded YC Startup School where we got some GCP credits. Just 2 months after, Google decided to close our billing account, at this time we had just over $2,400 remaining.

On reaching out to the Google Billing Team, they came up with several excuses including us using one of their top infrastructure which took all our credits. Of course that was a lie, we showed them our dashboard and services we had running. They then admitted it was an issue at their end.

Even till now, we only have 2 Compute Instances and 2 SQL instances.

After reaching out to the team severally to no avail, one eventually came back and claimed their Support Manager says they have to close the case as there's nothing they could further do on the matter. I asked, tell us what happened to the remaining credits, why was the account closed? Why was all our servers shut down?

All these questions and many others were not answered by the Team. Its over a month, they still can't figure our how Account got closed and what to do in our case.

We reached out to the GCP Slack group where we met this very helpful guy from Google. See his comment:

"Couldn’t agree more. Not just worrying, it’s unacceptable. The underlying issue is making sure that you are the real owner of the account, which is challenging when the account was deleted. The people who can confirm it have been unresponsive. I’m trying to figure out who they are exactly to message them personally (not through a ticketing system) and see if I can get an answer. I would be frustrated, too. We are failing you on this one, big time"

I implore you to take care when using GCP. Its clearly not mature and support has been really horrible. We have all communications archived and would be more than happy to share with anyone.

Anyone had a similar experience, please share! Don't be evil indeed!

16 comments

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mark_l_watson
From your experience and other things I have read, if you are a huge customer, then you get responsive support.

GCP is a great fit for me (running low traffic sites on AppEngine and occasionally spinning up a huge VPS), but it is not for everyone.

I enjoy using GCP more than AWS, but AWS probably has much better customer support. Google really should fix this.

tomascot
AWS even refunds you when you caused the trouble. Amazon in general has top notch support.
ifemide06
We were with AWS for over 2 years. Equally had credits and never at any point had a single issue. Of course, they are more reliable.
2_listerine_pls
There was a service generating charges in my account but I forgot to close it. After contacting support, they refunded the last month.
QuinnyPig
Google has always struggled with the human element; you generally don't go with a Google offering if you need support.

Unfortunately, you never need support for cloud infrastructure-- right up until you really, really need support.

neilthecellist
Too true. On the products side, my nexus 5x started bootlooping. When I called for support, what they told me over the phone versus what their page said didn't align at all. The lack of internal alignment is a key negative for bad customer service delivery. This is something other competitors (not all to be fair) like AWS nail really, REALLY well.
nucleardog
I've got tickets open with their accounts team, relating to our AdWords usage where we were spending maybe $80k/mo with them, that have been open and unresponded to for two or three years now despite my following up on it several times initially.

In my experience the AdWords team themselves are generally pretty responsive and helpful, but anything they can't fix directly just goes into a blackhole of non-support. And it's not a case of "it's free", since we're spending a not-insignificant amount of money with the company.

tscanausa
Hi,

Terrance here from Google Cloud Support. We're looking into this. Please email me tsg@google.com and with any bad experiences you have had I will get you answers by EOD PDT. My calendar is clear to answer them all.

-Terrance

tscanausa
I see this was submitted at some point during my night. I cleared my calendar for tomorrow as well and will be available earlier then normal working hours so that we might have a few hours of overlap. -Terrance
ifemide06
Hi Terrance. Sent an email. Much appreciated!
segmondy
Gee, I've been seriously exploring GCP and picked it over AWS. This is terrifying.
jonkirkman
After almost two years on GCP I can't give them anything but glowing reviews. We also began using with a pile-o-credit. There have been two billing/usage issues in that time. The first was an error on their part and was corrected without drama. The second issue was an error made by my team. They helped explain how to avoid it next month.

I'm really hope that your experience (rather than mine) is an anomaly.

pattrn
I switched from AWS to Google Cloud a few years ago, and I haven't looked back. None of these issues have happened to me, and they've provided the same services at significantly cheaper. Sorry for your troubles -- I hope you get this resolved.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
softwarefounder
I was going to use GCP, but ended up using AWS after discovering GCP doesn't [currently] support MSSQL as a service.

Couldn't be happier with AWS.

jstewartmobile
I'm also trying it out with some free GCP credits, so it could just be a case of getting what I pay for, but here are my issues with GCP:

- Similar instance type seems much less responsive than my AWS instances.

- Last I checked, they won't let me host my own mail server (they won't do port 25).

- No IPv6 (Amazon is only marginally better in this respect)

- Amazon typically has a human answer ASAP. I don't recall getting a human answer from Google, ever.