DigitalOcean "pulled the rug out from under" Ryan Bates (RailsCasts)
Here are the details for those interested:<p>I received an automated email September 2 stating charges were accumulating on my sponsored DigitalOcean account. This has happened in the past so I assumed it was a fault due to changes in their billing system.<p>I couldn&#x27;t find a contact that still worked at the company, so I opened a support ticket on September 5 asking if they were willing to continue sponsorship. I received a response the same day stating they informed the CSM team and one would reach out to me.<p>I didn&#x27;t receive a response from that team until October 6. In the meantime I received constant automated emails stating my account was overdue. I emailed them a couple times concerned about this and they stated &quot;Please don’t worry about immediate account suspension.&quot;<p>The reason they gave for stopping sponsorship was &quot;DigitalOcean recently stopped providing a small group of accounts free access but given RailsCasts history with us, I am requesting an exception be made.&quot;<p>We setup a Google hangout meeting on October 15 to discuss renewal and concluded I may qualify for an annual credit under their open source program. I told them I would need a little time to evaluate the requirements of the app since it doesn&#x27;t receive as much traffic as it used to.<p>On October 21 at 4 AM my account was suspended automatically due to overdue payment. When I woke up and saw this I emailed them and they reactivated my account an hour later and moved the deadline to Nov 10.<p>After further discussions we concluded a $360 credit would work for the next year at a new droplet size. I asked &quot;Is it possible to start the $360 credit on November 10 and clear the existing balance at that time? Currently it says my account owes $654, not certain where that number came from.&quot;<p>They responded &quot;I will reach out to our billing team about this. It looks like a majority of the $654 due is what your account has accrued over time. I will work to clear the balance from before the free status was turned off.&quot;<p>I responded &quot;Considering there was no warning that the free status would be turned off, is it possible to clear the balance after I&#x27;ve transitioned to the smaller droplet (by November 10)? There&#x27;s still a balance for this month which will be around $80.&quot;<p>They responded &quot;It looks like communication was sent out from DO on 7&#x2F;17 regarding Railscast&#x27;s free account status being turned off on 9&#x2F;1.&quot;<p>I could find no record of that email in my Gmail account. I asked for a copy of the email and they said &quot;It looks like the email was sent from success@info.digitalocean.com to your RailsCast email on 7&#x2F;17&#x2F;2020. If you have unsubscribed from DigitalOcean emails in the past, this could explain why you did not receive the communication.&quot;<p>Apparently the email was sent through their promotional channels which I am unsubscribed from. I was receiving other emails regarding billing but never received a notice of the sponsorship ending.<p>They also stated &quot;$558.68 out of the $654.68 was from the usage your account consumed before being set free in 2014. In order to avoid suspension, the balance will need to be paid off by 11&#x2F;10.&quot;<p>I gave evidence that the $558.68 was a fault of their invoicing system and my account was free from the beginning. In fact, I have an email from a DigitalOcean co-founder stating my account would be setup with &quot;a lifetime of credits&quot;. I can understand if they didn&#x27;t want to be committed to this statement from 8 years ago, but at least be up front about it and don&#x27;t charge me for something I never agreed to.<p>They stated &quot;As an act of good faith, I will work with finance to provide a credit towards the balance ($558.68) you previously owed before having your account marked free.&quot;<p>A few days later the deadline was approaching. I asked for an update on this but did not receive any response. By this time my total account balance showed $749.62 which it appeared I needed to pay before Nov 10 in order to avoid the site going down again. That weekend I decided to move the app over to Linode.<p>On November 9 I received an email from them stating they cleared the $558.68 but &quot;You will still need to pay for your September and October consumption ($190.94). If you do not pay by tomorrow, you run the risk of your account be suspended and losing access to your data.&quot;<p>I was not happy with this result. The $190.94 was largely due to me waiting on them during the discussions. Each response from them would take a few days up to a week to get back. I don&#x27;t feel right about promoting a business which charges someone for something they never agreed to.<p>This is when I tweeted that railscasts.com has moved over to Linode. Later that day I received an automated email from DigitalOcean granting my account $1,150.00 credit. I emailed this morning asking about this but haven&#x27;t heard back yet. While I appreciate the gesture, I have no plans to be sponsored by DigitalOcean again.