My Sprites stopped working with no advance warning, and there was no clear way to know when or how they’ll come back online, short of guessing at some unseen end-of-month invoice event.
This looks like the same underlying mechanic described in Prepaid budget used up, rolled “directly” into billing and Organization disabled, but with a wrinkle I haven’t seen written up: no notice at all, before or after.
I’ve been running Sprites for about six months on the initial $30 credit grant. I love them! Thank you!
But after a stretch of heavier usage, the account went from working to completely blocked with no notice beforehand: no email saying I’d crossed the $30 grant, nothing about an outstanding provisional invoice for a period that hadn’t even closed (current billing period is July 1-Aug 1, and this happened well before month-end). The first sign anything was wrong was the account simply not working. The billing page showed $0 available credit, $25.29 due, and a saved card set to “Charged automatically” that apparently never got the chance to fire before service was cut.
That’s the part I don’t understand: why does the account get suspended before the automatic charge on file is attempted, rather than that charge just firing at the point the credit runs out? If the card is “Charged automatically,” why not trigger it right there instead of blocking the account and leaving it to some unspecified future invoice event?
Buying just some credit didn’t restore service either. I bought the $25 minimum expecting that to unblock things immediately - instead it just applied against the existing shortfall (which I now see is consistent with flyio-support’s explanation in the “Prepaid budget” thread above: credits pay down outstanding balance first, they’re not a way to “unlock” the account). I was still short and still blocked, so I was forced to buy the minimum $25 again ($50 total) to cover roughly $26.29 of actual usage. My sprites are working again, but the outage and confusion was frustrating.
Tentative advice for anyone else who hits this: if you’re blocked, you’ll need to at least clear the amount due.
Now it’s unclear when it might stop again.
Would really appreciate clarity from the team on:
- Is there supposed to be any email or alert before an account gets blocked this way
- Why does suspension happen before the automatic card charge is attempted, rather than the charge simply firing at that point?
- Once blocked, is there any way to know when/whether service resumes automatically, versus needing to manually top up or email billing@fly.io?
- When might this happen again?
I hope this can all be made much clearer, so you have more productive and happy customers for a cool service.
