I was testing IBM Bluemix with an assigned credit card.
However after 10 days it shows me, that I will be charged for
10$. I was only creating one 512mb container at the time with one IP
and my volume was always 20GB big. The fees are only showing up in
the summary. If I show charges for my account (joerg.bluemix#higgsboson.tk)
the site just crashes. Is this an accounting bug?
(I already opened some tickets however I got no response for any of them, ...)
The account balance shows how much the service usage would be billed, not considering the free tier. Anyway the final and aggregated balance shows what you should finally pay, and if the usage is under the free tier of each service the balance will be 0.
Anyway you can contact the IBM Bluemix support through the support widget on your Bluemix dashboard, nor through the support page at
http://ibm.biz/bluemixsupport
Related
This problem happens after enabling the billing method using a Pakistani Credit Card, and Billing details also fill up as Pakistani Addresses.
The selected project and billing account cannot pay for Maps in your region. Select an existing project that is paid for by a Maps billing account.
I have this problem while creating a Flutter Application using Google Map SDK.
Solution:
I have searched several sites and discovered that the problem is due to creating Pakistani Billing Addresses.
Why does this problem happen?
Google Cloud Console supports INR, USD and Rupee, but for using Google Map SDK / Enabling Map Billing, the account has to be USD Support.
How to solve this ?
First of all, check if you've enabled the API you're trying to use, or second, you must check the billing account type, go to an overview of your billing account, and there you'll find it. If it is a cloud console type, then you've to create another project and link it with another billing account with maps (that's what I've done, and still trying to find a way to merge both of them) and, most importantly, maps billing account won't in INR it'll be USD, The INR is allowed only of cloud console billing account not on Maps Platform.
Thanks to incrediblezayed for sharing this on Reddit. If you want to know more, you can check this Reddit post. Check Here ->
Hope I am in the ibm-bluemix group. Any idea how to get an invoice on pay as you go accounts ? The credit card charges do not match up to usage summaries. Getting ready to dump bluemix as it seems to have degraded over these past 6-18 months.
While it is not a programming question, here are the answers to your questions. There is an updated FAQ available to answer these questions. See:
https://www.ibm.com/blogs/bluemix/2016/04/bluemix-id-and-billing-faq/
In it, here is the information about the invoice:
Q: How do I get information about my invoice?
There are different ways to obtain your invoice depending on your type of account.
If you have a Bluemix account linked to a Bluemix Infrastructure account, you can view your invoice within the Bluemix Administrative Console using these steps:
Log in to Bluemix.
Click Manage and select Billing and Usage > Invoices.
Click an invoice
Note: You must have a Bluemix and Bluemix Infrastructure (formerly SoftLayer) linked account to see the Invoices option. For more information, see Linking your Bluemix and SoftLayer accounts.
If you have a Bluemix subscription or a Pay-Per-Use account, you can request an invoice through the Invoices On-Line site. Use the same IBM ID and password that you use to log into Bluemix. If you cannot log in, go to the Register Here option and select the appropriate choice for obtaining invoices for your account. For more information about invoices, access the IBM Customer Support web site, select your region, and click Frequently Asked Questions > Invoices and payments.
In terms of the usage information versus billing, this information might help you:
Q. What is the difference between what is shown on the Usage Dashboard and what is billed?
Look at Account dashboard to see the free allotments for the services that you are using. Free allotments are applied to the account level and not the organization level. In addition, the differences depend on your type of account as explained below:
Subscription: The billed contractual interval is based upon a negotiated payment for usage credits. The bill does not necessarily equal your usage.
Trial: The Account Dashboard lists the estimated cost of your environment if you had a pay-per-use account.
Pay-Per-Use: The Usage Dashboard lists what you owe including free allotments that are provided by some services. Note: Some third-party services, such as SendGrid, do not bill for their service through Bluemix if you signed up for their service outside of Bluemix.
If you have separate Platform as a Service (Paas) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS – formerly known as SoftLayer ) accounts, you will be billed separately. However, you can get one combined bill if you link your accounts. For more information, see Linking your Bluemix and SoftLayer accounts.
If you have further questions about your bill, please submit a Support ticket.
During the registration process on Google Cloud Platform I filled up 3 times the wrong phone number and I got 3 payment transactions from my card, each one of 1 USD.
It means that you can just set card number with valid CVC and press "ok" button.
Is this ok or I missed about this charge in The Terms of Service ?
Thank you!
It is pretty common for providers like Google to put a small hold on a credit card to test that it is valid. If you use a debit card this will actually decrease the available balance on the account, but it should not be finalized and the money will not actually be taken.
I suggest you get in touch with Google's billing team, who will be able to track down the payment and double check everything is correct.
Is there ability to get in some way Balance on CreditCard ?
API of Authorize.net or Paypal were examined on this subject and no results.
In real life any cash terminal can show to you balance on your credit card. That is why I assume there is some way to get this balance in web through some payment gateway.
Thanks in advance for answers!
I've dealt with many credit card processing APIs and unless it is an API for a gateway solution, they generally do not have methods to do much in the way of querying for information. You might see some capability (again, in a gateway API but not in a lower-level processor's API) to load details of the original transaction, but not much else.
This makes sense in terms of supporting high volume transactions. I visited FDMS once and talked to them a bit about their architecture. To maintain a > 1k TPS processing capability, they can't even wait for database writes when you're authorizing. That authorization code you get back is assigned from a pre-determined pool. The data about the transaction is pushed off to another process for persisting to a large back end system for later settlement. This is why many of the non-gateways have rules about waiting x minutes before trying to settle; the data isn't in the settlement system for a bit after authorization. This is also the reason why the authorization code expires after a while - they re-use it. (Someone got the bright idea that they'd charge you extra for letting the auth code expire.....probably due to the increased load of data they need to store in the settlement system waiting for these things to time out.)
Checking a credit balance is also not part of a normal credit card processing workflow. Mostly you attempt to authorize and get one of 3 results: a hard decline, a soft decline, or an authorization. A balance check isn't really needed, and would probably open up some privacy or security issues if it were available.
Cash cards (like pre-loaded Visas) use a different administrative activiation and management API. Gift cards work the same way, and you can use that administrative API to get balances. This is a special case because these technically aren't credit cards.
I've not dealt much with the back end settlement networks that the issuing banks and the acquiring banks use to transfer data during settlement. To get this kind of info, you'd have to have access to this network. You might want to check the "any cash terminal will give you a balance" statement a bit. It would make sense that you could get your balance from an issuing bank's ATM, but try to do it on one of those third-party type machines you find in gas stations that is not from your issuing bank to see if it works. If you use a true credit card (not a debit card - that is a different network entirely), I don't know that it will show you your balance.
The only thing that I can think of is to use the AuthOnly method and try running (and voiding) multiple transactions, incrementing the PaymentAmount values until it fails.
Is there ability to get in some way Balance on CreditCard ?
No.
API of Authorize.net or Paypal were examined on this subject and no results.
That's because you can't get someone else's balance. It's private information.
In real life any cash terminal can show to you balance on your credit card. That is why I assume there is some way to get this balance in web through some payment gateway.
Emphasis on the 'show to you' part because you own the card. And the only allowed parties involved is the cardholder (with card in hand and pin) and the issuing bank and/or card company. Even over the phone there are security checks (Date of birth, zip/postal code, etc)
You will (should) never be able to get, through an API, gateway solution, or otherwise, the card holders balance unless you are affiliated with the issuing credit card and have been requested by the card holder after security checks.
This would be a gaping security and privacy hole. Think of all the professional credit card theifs being able to pull the balance amounts on thousands of credit cards in order to help know which cards and how much of an amount to charge, transfer and extort.
I just wanted to ask among the gurus here if anyone has ever attempted to test a complete transaction from start to end on an ecommerce site using paypal or any other epayment gateway.
Please guys, I would appreciate any thoughts and comments. As it is a live site, I cant use the sandbox as that will negatively impact sales. However my firm is a startup and so can't afford the complete transaction and refund process that was suggested [here]:Accepting dummy credit cards on a live site with ActiveMerchant & PayPal.
Please help!
Previously I tested by buying low cost items from myself - that way you're only paying commission and you're getting most of the moneyback.
Admittedly you need 2 Paypal accounts, but that shouldn't be a problem, and you should only have to 'kick the tyres' in the live environment because all your testing will have been done in the dev environment.
We had a similar problem during startup and still use this process in the live site. We have specific "test" products that we purchase using a live credit card, then monitor the transactions: purchase, decline purchase, subscription (recurring billing), cancel, refund, etc.
Our test product is priced very low (5 cents). For subscriptions, the billing interval is 1 day, for a maximum of 3 intervals (with a free trial period of 1 day). This allows me to run a full test/validation, including recurring billing, in the live environment in less than a week.
We refund all charges following the test, which puts the money back on the credit card (or back in the PayPal account). Because of the refunding, our sales impact is zero (offsetting sale and refund). It does cost us a small non-refundable PayPal fee for each transaction, but that amounts to $1 or less.
These "test" products are not exposed to normal users. Also, we manually verify any "test" sales to make sure they are part of our internal testing.
"Sandbox" testing is the way to go during development, but a periodic test in the live environment is necessary to be verify that nothing is amiss.
Why not use a real credit card, then give yourself a refund? The commision fee is returned in that case.
All the time that I want to test our live sites we use a real credit card.
Thanks
I don't understand why you can't use the sandbox..?? How would using it negatively impact your sales? It's all fake.
Just setup your own sandbox.yourdomain.com version of your site and use that as your test server. Configure it to use PayPal's sandbox with sandbox API credentials, etc. This will allow you to go all the way through an order process and test everything from the UI stuff to payment processing, API requests/response processing, IPN, etc.
When everything is working you sync it up with your live server, which is hitting the live PayPal server, of course.
Again, I don't see how that would impact you in any way other than being a successful testing solution..??