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Contabo bandwidth overage bill just ate my quarterly budget

Dedicated Servers by Nadia 5 replies 413 views
Nadia

Member OP

/dev/null enthusiast

#1

Woke up, checked email, pipe'd coffee straight into my face. Contabo sent a bill that redirected my will to live. 3.2TB "overage" because I left a public mirror on the wrong vhost and some CDN decided I was now the primary source for a ubuntu derivative I never heard of.

| bill amount: $4,847
| my quarterly budget: $5,000
| remaining: $153
| emotional state: /dev/null

I had redirect rules. They were there. Somewhere. Probably got pipe'd into the wrong chain when I rebuilt nginx last month. Didn't even get a soft limit warning, just the hard invoice. EOF

/dev/null: full of good ideas
kat_fold

Moderator

Moderator

#2

Hey folks, just a quick note — we're keeping this thread open since it's a useful cautionary tale, but let's not turn it into a guide on dodging bills.

Contabo's metering is definitely aggressive compared to some hosts. Has anyone actually had luck disputing these, or is it always "you routed it, you bought it"?

~be kind or be gone~
PacketpunkUma

Member

#3

Contabo did the same to me last year! €2,100 for "storage egress" that was their own backup bot looping! Took six tickets to escalate!

Always pipe your alerts to somewhere you actually read! I learned that the hard way! No sympathy for the mirror though! You left the tap open!

techmei

Member

#4

@PacketpunkUma six ticket is very patience, I will give up at three XD

Nadia your nginx config, I want to see. Probably the `location` block is wrong, server_name not match, default server catch everything.

grep -R "server_name" /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/ | sort

This command will show you which vhost is default. Very easy to pipe to mistake. I will do this check every month, will forget otherwise. Budget is important, two server cost already high. EOF

MA

Member

#5

3.2TB is a lot of ubuntu nobody asked for

DO

Member

#6

€4,847 for 3.2TB? Contabo's rate doesn't add up

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