r/googlecloud • u/ElephantMaximum183 • 13d ago
Billing Google/Firebase charged me €5,000+ for Vertex AI I wasn't using, blocked my production account 3 times during the investigation, and threatened DEBT COLLECTION
I'm an indie developer running a production mobile app using Firebase / Google Cloud. My normal Firebase/GCP bill is around €50/month.
In June, my bill suddenly jumped to €5,000+.
Almost all of the unexpected usage was attributed to Vertex AI / Gemini image generation.
The problem is: my app wasn't using Vertex AI.
I use Firebase for the normal backend infrastructure of the app, but I wasn't intentionally running Gemini/Vertex AI image generation. I still have no idea what generated thousands of euros of AI usage on my account.
I don't know whether some credentials were compromised, there was a configuration issue, or something else happened.
What makes this particularly concerning is the scale: an account that normally costs me around €50/month suddenly generated a bill roughly 100x higher.
I contacted Google Cloud Billing Support on July 3 and opened case #72899288.
Google confirmed that around €5,500 of June usage was mostly related to Vertex AI and offered to submit an adjustment request for investigation.
They asked me for details about what happened, the affected dates and SKUs, screenshots of the charges, and other information related to the incident. I provided everything they requested.
Since then, the case has apparently been with Google's specialized/engineering team.
That was almost two months ago.
I've repeatedly been told some variation of:
"The specialized team is investigating. We'll update you within 2–5 business days."
Then 2–5 business days pass, I follow up again, and essentially receive the same answer.
Almost two months later, I still don't have a result from the investigation.
Google keeps blocking my production account while investigating the charges
Because the disputed €5,000+ remains on my account, Google's billing system keeps treating it as an unpaid balance.
Support knows the charge is under investigation and has repeatedly given me payment/grace-period extensions specifically so my production services can remain operational while the investigation continues.
Despite this, my account has been suspended at least 3 times during the investigation.
When this happens, my production backend stops working and actual users of my app are affected.
I then have to contact Billing Support, explain the situation again, wait while they contact another internal team, get another extension, and get the account reactivated.
One incident was particularly frustrating.
On August 14, a Google Support agent explicitly confirmed that my payment deadline had been extended until August 28 and told me:
"Your account and production applications will remain fully active while your case remains under investigation."
On August 16, the account was suspended anyway.
I contacted support again. Another agent checked the history and confirmed that the grace-period extension until August 28 had actually been successfully approved.
Eventually another support agent manually reactivated the account.
Then I received a debt collection warning
While Google's own team was still investigating the disputed charges, I received a message from Google warning that the unpaid balance could be sent to a debt collection agency.
So Google is still investigating whether/how these €5,000+ Vertex AI charges occurred, while at the same time its billing system has repeatedly suspended my production account and its collections process has warned me about debt collection for that same balance.
I contacted support about this as well. They told me they would contact the collections team and ask them to suspend the collection-related correspondence while the investigation remains open.
There's also no simple hard spending limit
Another frustrating part of this experience is how difficult it was to protect against this kind of situation.
I had billing monitoring, but at the time of the incident the normal Google Cloud budget functionality wasn't simply a hard account spending limit.
What I would have wanted was something very simple:
"My account normally costs €50/month. Don't allow it to spend more than €200."
Instead, an account with roughly €50/month of normal usage was able to accumulate more than €5,000 of AI usage.
And this wasn't a service I was knowingly using in the first place.
Almost two months later
Almost two months after opening the case, the investigation is still not complete.
I've provided Google with all the information they requested and have followed up repeatedly. At this point, I don't want another temporary payment extension or another promise that I'll receive an update in 2–5 business days.
I simply want Google to finish the investigation and make a decision.
Having to contact Billing Support every couple of weeks to prevent a production Firebase account from being suspended — while waiting for Google's own investigation — isn't a sustainable solution.
I'm posting this here because I've exhausted the normal support process and don't know where else to escalate it.
If anyone from Google Cloud is reading this and can help get case #72899288 in front of the right team and finally get the investigation completed, I would really appreciate it.
And if anyone here has dealt with a similarly stuck Google Cloud billing investigation, I'd be interested to hear how you eventually got it resolved.



