Hang on - what would you do if you were running a business with hundreds of thousands of users and someone doesn't pay? Was it an accident? has the customer gone bust, or died, or are they trying to defraud you and get a month or two of free service.
Credit cards are exceptionally finicky, very susceptible to fraud, and payment can often fail. They're great for one off purchases and services that don't matter if they don't go through - but not suitable unless you're going to check that payments are made, which the OP seems not to have done. Perhaps GCP notifications should be better (I've experience the similar scenario with AWS and everything got fixed within a day) - but surely its up to the customer to make sure they pay.
I actually had some payment troubles with Linode a few months back; I had cancelled one of my bank accounts and forgot the CC there was tied to Linode, and because credit cards are not very common where I live and it can take a bit to request one so I couldn't "just" pay. Oops!
100% a mistake on my part of course; I emailed Linode, explained the above, and they said "sure, is 3 weeks time enough to sort it out? I've delayed any action on your account until such-and-such date but let us know if you need more time".
I've been a Linode customer for several years, paying about $100/month. Just a guy running some small things, hardly a big customer.
If Linode can do it, then surely Google can. Yes, you will probably have the occasional non-payment, but is kicking your people off your platform for a simple administrative mistake/mixup that much better? Accepting the occasional non-payment is better than kicking off people at the drop of a hat. I've since paid several more $100/month to Linode and everyone won in this situation: Linode because they kept a customer who will keep paying, and me because I could get my stuff sorted without having to worry about having my services cancelled.
Google's policy is simply short-sighted on every level, and harms Google's business interests too. The reason they can do things like this is because they have money to spare. Every business that's not swimming in cash like Scrooge McDuck treats their customers like this; the "big tech" company are the exceptions.
Linode stopped my services because of 20$ outstanding balance that I ignored for two weeks (was on vacation). When I tried to update the payment method, the card wasn't accepted, and after a few tries I got an error message that I made too many attempts and wouldn't be allowed to change it for the next 24h.
Fortunately they have customer support, and 5 minutes after emailing them they resumed my services again.
No, because Linode is using humans to interact with you. Google will not humans in those situation, their mantra is to automate everything so they can scale up with minimal human effort, even when it doesn't make sense to scale up that way.
Your rhetorical questions don't match OPs story. According to OP they did pay, manually, not even by credit card.
> however we went ahead and made a manual payment covering all the outstanding amount + extra
(the entire last paragraph of OPs text has those and more details)
I suggest not using and then arguing with and against fantasized stuff when we are talking about a concrete problem for which we have a concrete description, no?
Given that OP paid, of what use is your objection about non-paying customers here?
You also omit this important part:
> They ... assured the project will not be suspended.
> Your rhetorical questions don't match OPs story. According to OP they did pay, manually, not even by credit card.
That's fair enough - somehow I completely misread/understood that part of the post.
But my main point was that you should never be using credit cards for services that you rely on - particularly when billing/payment is automated and hidden from you. Credit card payments and checks fail regularly (10%+ for recurring payment charges) for legitimate (you don't have funds) and less legitimate reasons (a banks AI system thinking the charge looks fraudulent due to something outside of your account etc). Vendors are likely to stop the service as soon as they can get away with so they don't loose money.
It's simple - you give them notice during local working hours (i.e. not the weekend), that way the customer has time to rectify, and if they don't you can take action and have proof of warning them of the consequences of ignoring the notification. If they are having payment issues, it affords both parties time to discuss the issues and see what can reasonably done. It's called customer service - something that Google clearly struggles with.
I run a business with thousands of users. When payment fails, I try again eight times over two weeks. You get notices each time. There's no surprises. There's no excuse for shutting someone off abruptly for credit card issues.
Credit cards are exceptionally finicky, very susceptible to fraud, and payment can often fail. They're great for one off purchases and services that don't matter if they don't go through - but not suitable unless you're going to check that payments are made, which the OP seems not to have done. Perhaps GCP notifications should be better (I've experience the similar scenario with AWS and everything got fixed within a day) - but surely its up to the customer to make sure they pay.