Excessed API usages - account suspension

Question

Hello,

we just found out that for only 222 ( 2$ bill ) additional API requests our database has been suspended. This is totally unacceptable as we have clients relying on this service.
Why is the payment not happening automatically and simply sending a notification to us? Furthermore why didn't you notify us before suspending our account?

This kind of behaviour is harmful towards our clients and if you don't change the way of this behaviour we will be forced to consider alternatives.

Thank you

Answer 1

Your excess handling is set to "Separate billing after exceeding" which will not stop service immediately after exceeding.

This is what happened:

1. on 9.28, limitation reached, and a notification mail was sent to your email address.

2. on 10.1, the bill was generated, and a notification mail was sent to your email address.

3. on 10.10, the service was stopped because no payment happened.

4. on 10.12, a new payment was in, and the service recovered.

We have confirmed that on both 9.28 and 10.1, mails were sent successfully, and service was not stopped.

Please contact us if anything unclear.

Comments

Hello Kenn,

well noted regarding your emails, they were sent on Saturday and they finished in spam list so, well, we didn't have the chance to check them.

For the rest, all clear but to be honest your excess billing management is extremely weird.

If I understood this right, we have 2 options:

1. Separate billing after exceeding
2. Service suspension after exceeding

Both of them require manual interaction and while the second one doesn't make sense at all to me, the first one still is very dangerous as it can stop the database to work in a couple of days. In both cases this results as a lack of service towards our clients and it is very harmful.
Is there a way to get an option 3, let's say, generate an automatic invoice at the end of the month with the excess billing included? In simple words: automatic billing of extra usage.

This is actually how Vuforia billing works ( yes, we come from there ), and it resulted in a very smooth and more effective way of delivering the service rather than being constantly under the threat of having the service suspended.

Thank you.

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Good point. There is one kind of automatic billing in the system.

If you go to the billing management page, you will see this at the question mark when hover,

(2) In case of overuse of the purchased foreign partition service, the amount will be automatically deducted from the us dollar account on the 11th day of the following month. Please make sure that the balance is sufficient. If the balance is insufficient, the service will be suspended directly.

It may looks different as you expected. We are looking into the feasibility of automatic billing through PayPal directly.

Thank you for your advice.

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Hello Kenn,

we cannot forecast exactly if users around the world will suddely use the app and go beyond the forecasted limit. You cannot expect us to leave thousand euros in prepaid account to be used "if needed". I really hope automatic billing will be a new feature and added urgently, please let me know when available.

Another question: we now want to switch between billing plans, because we find that DAU is more manageble than API USAGE. How can we switch between billing plans? I see no easy option there, help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

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Understand. We are working on automatic billing. Will let you know the update.

Switch between billing plans is possible but it is not a user operation right now. Please send us an email to support@easyar.com for a formal request, we can help to switch to equivalent plan.

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Great! Thanks for the support