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Cloudflare took down our website after trying to force us to pay $120000 within 24h
(robindev.substack.com)
this post was submitted on 26 May 2024
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Jesus. Something shady is happening with cloudflare.
That does not inspire confidence.
Is there? The casino is on a cheap $250 a month plan they don't belong on and they broke ToS with the domains. While also costing Cloudflare money each month (as the casino admits themselves, their traffic alone is worth up to $2000 a month).
It's absolutely in the right of Cloudflare to drop a customer that's bothersome. Casinos usually are (regulations, going around country restrictions), them costing them money on top is a massive issue.
120k a year is a big slap of course, but it's probably the amount Cloudflare would want to keep them on as a customer. If they leave, so be it.
I've seen it several times before at companies I worked at. They cheaped out and went with a tiny service plan to coast by. Or even broke ToS because it would be cheaper. That usually got stopped by plans getting dropped (GitLab Bronze for example), cheap plans getting limited, or the sales team sending a 'friendly' message that we're abusing their plan and how we're going to fix it. If you don't play along at that point you're going to get the hammer dropped on you.
It also wasn't 24h as the title says, the first communication happened in April. At that point they should have started to scramble, either upgrading to a bigger tier immediately or switching providers. And it's totally normal to go to the sales team when you break the ToS of your plan or you abuse a smaller plan. They're going to discuss terms, it's not a technical issue.
Edit: And I should also say, the whole "paying for a whole year is extortion" is bullshit too. Their CFO or CEO told Cloudflare they are looking at switching providers (as they looked at Fastly). So of fucking course Cloudflare is going to demand a full year upfront. Otherwise the casino could pay for a single month and during that month they switch away to another provider. So Cloudflare would still be thousands in the red with that ex-customer after they used so much traffic the last few years.
That Cloudflare were justifiably unhappy with the situation and wanted to take action is fine.
What's not fine is how they approached that problem.
In my opinion, the right thing for Cloudflare to do would have been to have an open and honest conversation and set clear expectations and dates.
Example:
"We have recently conducted a review of your account and found your usage pattern far exceeds the expected levels for your plan. This usage is not sustainable for us, and to continue to provide you with service we must move you to plan x at a cost of y.
If no agreement is reached by [date x] your service will be suspended on [date y]."
Clear deadlines and clear expectations. Doesn't that sound a lot better than giving someone the run-around, and then childishly pulling the plug when a competitor's name is mentioned?
Considering the perspective of the poster, the misleading title, etc - are you actually sure they didn't?
Until Cloudflare responds to the post, it is IMO most beneficial to assume that the OP is being truthful and forthright. Doing so puts pressure on Cloudflare to either clarify or rectify the situation, whereas treating Cloudflare as though they are above suspicion accomplishes nothing.
After all, OP is very much the little guy here.
Eh, I have a couple of issues with that. For one, I doubt CF would even respond to this. I could easily see them using this very writeup to sue, with all the admissions in it.
The bigger part though, is calling an online casino, whose own IT team (the writer) admitted they were knowingly abusing the plan they were on, the "little guy".
Are they small in comparison to Cloudflare? Absolutely, those schmucks have way too much control of the internet. Calling an online casino, whose own staff lied in the title, the little guy though... Doesn't sit right with me.
No, I'm not going to side with them, or with CF. I'm going to make my assumptions off what I know (two terrible companies, one of which has a liar writing an article where they pretend to not have admittted to their own lies about the subject), and I'm going to assume this:
Seems pretty obvious to me. Barring further details, my assumptions are based on what I know, and I am perfectly happy sticking to that.
You do you.
From the additional info I read, it sounds more like the traffic wasn't the main issue.
Gambling is forbidden in a lot of countries or heavily regulated. Cloudflare uses a common IP pool for all customers, so a casino customer would possibly get their IPs blacklisted (by various ISPs). The Enterprise tier of Cloudflare has "Bring your own IP (ByoIP)", which they probably wanted to force onto this problematic customer to protect their business.
So it's actually a problem, not just them paying not enough (which is another reason to get rid of them as fast as possible).
That would have been a mature thing to do.
The first communications were intentionally misleading though. CF wasn't trying to solve a problem, they were trying to sell a service. If CF had just led with "upgrade or we nuke your site" then that's scummy, but fair. Leading these guys on about technical problems and "trust & safety" bullshit was not fair at all.
Is that the first communication though? I would really like to hear Cloudflare's side of the story.
There were 3 issues at once, so "trust & safety" is definitely part of it.
So maybe fucking say that?
And understandably you wouldn't switch plans if all you're talking to is sales without context.
The biggest red flag is the up-front payment for a year, gives the indication that they are in actual financial trouble, meaning short in cash right now.
Fucking idiots could have been just increasing the price yearly without any resistance, it’s unlikely a big casino would care about an extra 50-100 per month.
I'm pretty heavily invested in cloudflare. This news is definitely making me reconsider that investment.
What I can say, is their stock is looking very healthy. There are a lot of people buying a lot of stock for them and the prospect over the next 3 to 5 months looks very promising. The only way they wouldn't have cash on hand as if they're spending a ridiculous amount of cash on some project that I'm not aware of, and I feel like I would be aware of it.
This is very peculiar. Definitely warrants further investigation.
Maybe someone dipshit in marketing heavily invested in LLMs, since that's the current hype among dipshits?
Cloudflare is publicly traded. They had $1.6 billion in cash or equivalents in December. Maybe they want to grease up the quarter to show better growth against the market, but that is a fuckload of cash.
or maybe it's just a lower level manager who wants to polish up their revenue numbers to ask for a raise / promotion :) capitalists are ugly little critters like that.
As I said in another comment: The up-front payment is the only thing that makes sense for Cloudflare. You got a customer that's costing you money each month. They broke ToS. You offer them a deal still to keep the services running. And their CEO/CFO tells you they are looking at other providers like Fastly.
If Cloudflare gave them a monthly contract then the casino would simply pay for a month and switch over their services to a competitor in that time. So Cloudflare loses all the money from the past (where the casino used far too much traffic) and will barely recoup 10k (minus the running cost, so more likely 7k at the high end) for a single month. It's just not worth it.
So they offer: Stick with us for a full year at least or get fucked. Which is fair.
This scenario would mean major negligence on their part, as they had been with Cloudflare for years. When it was clear their services were costing more than the business plan paid for, that's when they should have been contacted with clear numbers and a sheepish admission that "unlimited" doesn't actually mean unlimited. It certainly seems shady to me that they attempted to make it about a TOS violation, that there's no public information about enterprise level and pricing, and that the second they said they were talking to a competitor they had their data purged. It sounds like a failed attempt at extortion to me.
Read to me as:
I don't think I particularly agree with this take, but it's an interesting perspective.
If you are cloudflare and you suspect they broke ToS you quote which ToS has been broken, you specify which country blocking the customer is trying or has tried to circumvent and you force the customer to either move away or enforce geo-blocking for those countries (or have a separate account for those with your own IPs). There is no reason to cancel the whole account if the blocking is country-specific and there is no way that 10k a month is anyway a sufficient benefit for cloudflare for their IPs to be blocked in a country (affecting potentially hundreds or thousand of customers).
Exactly my thoughts
It's because CF could see that moving to another provider would not be too difficult for them. If they went month to month then they would be gone after one month. So CF decided to go with extortion instead. Either pay for $120k, or CF will set fire to your business.
Another comment pointed out this was probably to prevent them from signing up for a month then using that month to bounce to another provider
I think it's far more likely there's some sales goal and or performance indicator at play here.
CloudFlare don't need to subsidise an online casino with millions of subscribers, at everyone else's expense. Sure CF are a bunch of gigglefucks but this time I think they made a good decision.
Unless the casino is doing something illegal, it's really not their decision to make. If they don't want to subsidize them, all they'd have to do is be transparent and fair in their pricing. They way CF handled it instead just seems unprofessional and deceitful.
Exactly right.
If they are somehow losing money routing traffic then their pricing is fundamentally wrong, which is just as big of a black eye for cloudflare.
Subsidise how? They were using their existing plan as intended and even willing ditch the grey-area parts. If CF cannot afford to offer their plans as they are, they should change the offered plans, not hunt for easy prey.
Clearly CF were losing money on this account, so their other customers were subsidising.
Ah fuck it, I'm clearly at the bottom of a dog pile here, and I don't want to be friends with any of you, nor am I going to start thinking that an online casino deserves anything but contempt, so I'll be off.
No no, you're really not far off. Few, if any people here are advocating for CF to continue to provide the same services for the same price. It seems clear to most (including the author) that a price increase was justified. The problem we're all having is how they went about it, agnostic of the client.
(I don't care who the client was and don't care one way or the other about online casinos.)
I read the post and it doesn't sound abusive at all
Plus: cloudflare kept putting them in touch with the sales department. Not legal. Not technical support
It's just shit customer service, even if the customer is making a ton of money compared to your fees. Should a casino pay more for other services, too, just because they" don't need a subsidy"?
As strange as this may sound... if you're having serious technical problems, it's the sales team you want to talk to.
Sales people have way more pull at tech companies than the engineering teams do. If your sales rep sounds an alarm, people listen. When tech support sounds an alarm, nobody bats an eye.
In this particular situation, they should be reaching out to cloudflare's legal team. But, with their own legal team.
Good luck with the lawsuit for breach of contract when you broke the contract. I'm sure the judge will be amused.
It's not the decision to ask more money, it's how they made it and in violation of their own terms of service, also extortion, so yes they are dipshits.