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I closed my VULTR account after getting this email from them

----- Dear Vultr Customer,

Including pending charges, your account is carrying a $5.94 balance.

In order to cover your current balance and your estimated monthly costs, our billing system will automatically deposit $275.00 from your payment method on file in 24 hours.




That's ridiculous, regardless of your username.


How many instances did you have at the time you received the email?

Usually, when I receive an email like this, the amount is equal to the monthly bill of the instances I have active at the moment.


I had one $5 instance, which is what made this seem ridiculous


Yep, it is insane if you only had 1 $5 instance.

Maybe a bug in their billing software or something...


Yes, but it's still stupid. Cloud hosting companies who are using hourly billing are used to spin instances up and down all the time. Imagine your app has a busy day and you need 500% more resources than usual, with the system of Vultr you will be automatically charged 500% of your regular usage only because of one days spike (obviously only if you are near the $0 balance mark)


> you will be automatically charged 500% of your regular usage

You are not being "charged" per se. The amount is transferred to your account and is there as credit until you spend it.

Sorry for nitpicking, but it is important point.


I'm going to nitpick in reverse.

You are being _charged_

- This is a charge against your card

- They are not a bank, so the money in your "account" with them is just an unsecured, general liability to you. If they go bust, they owe you money but you will never see it.

- If you want to withdraw that money from your "account" and they refuse, then your options are pretty limited.

Once they take it from your payment method, it becomes their money, not yours. That's a charge.


I am not disagreeing with what you say, but "charged" as it was used in the GP comment, it might have lead someone to believe that VULTR charge for usage per month.


To be honest, I have no idea what you are talking about. Your card is being charged and that's all I said. Sure you have credits to spend, but the cash you have no immediate need for on your Vultr account sits now there because of their billing practices.


Wow. Have you contacted them about it? That's crazy, I'd have to assume it's a bug.

I've never been charged on vultr, as I use bitcoin to always pay my bills (which is push only). I think they have stopped accepting that for new customers due to abuse though, which is quite a shame (but understandable).


They do send out emails like this, however they seem fairly flexible. I have several Vultr instances running, and they're quite happy for me to fund the account as and when if required, and have never automatically charged me.

That said, it is an odd message to send out, and I had my concerns when I first received a similar email. Maybe it's something they should look into altering.


Wow, I've never had that happen all the emails I've gotten from them have said they'll automatically deposit $10. Never had anything over $10.




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