Google closed my decade-old Cloud account

1 points by moinism 2 years ago | 2 comments

I've been using Google Cloud for my multiple SaaS products, mainly because of Firebase, for about a decade.

Today, I received emails from Firebase that my projects changed from a paid to a free plan due to an issue with my billing account. (And no, payment was not the issue. I do not have any outstanding payments. That was the first thing I checked.)

When I log into GC, the top bar in red shows: Your account has been closed. You can no longer access Google Cloud. Contact support for further assistance.

My billing page shows: This billing account is closed. Reopen it to continue using linked projects. But when I try to reopen it, it says: You can't reopen this billing account because this account is not in good standing.

The payment overview page says: Your payments profile is currently suspended because some information on your account couldn't be verified.

Pointing me to this URL: https://support.google.com/pay/contact/account_verification

So apparently, Google needed to verify something about me, and instead of asking for it, they thought, why not close the account first? What's the harm in that?

simonblack 2 years ago |

If somebody else on the cloud is holding your data, they own it. You don't.

If somebody else on the cloud is holding your data, they can take it away from you at any minute.

If somebody else on the cloud is holding your data, you need a backup of that data on your system.

If you have a copy of the data on your system, you can make a separate backup of that data, also under your control.

If you have both your own data, and a separate backup of that data, why are you giving your data to somebody else on the cloud?

LeonB 2 years ago |

That’s horrible. Good luck, I hope this gets resolved some how.