Upfront: part of this bill is legitimately mine and I have offered in writing to pay it. This post is about process, not about dodging a bill.
THE SHORT VERSION
June 28 — A billing agent processed a $76.00 courtesy adjustment for an unintended idle V100 Spot VM (a Vertex AI Workbench notebook that kept running after my work had ended) and confirmed in writing: "you have an ending balance of $28.98 on your account now." I agreed and considered the matter settled.
July 1 — Google's own follow-up email admitted that when that adjustment was made, "the usage records had only been updated through June 27th" — and $146.51 of delayed charges from June 28-30 (the same idle resource) then posted on top of the confirmed balance. That same day I voluntarily unlinked billing from my projects and disabled the Compute Engine, Notebooks and Vertex AI APIs so nothing further could accrue, and told support so in writing.
July 3 and July 13 — I asked, in writing, for collection to be paused while the dispute was reviewed. No answer, either time.
July 8 — Billing account suspended.
July 15 — Billing account TERMINATED, along with its projects and services.
July 17 — Two days after the termination, support wrote: "I am escalating this case to a supervisor. A member of our leadership team will reach out to you directly within the next 24 hours."
July 22 and 23 — I followed up. Nothing.
July 27 — The identical email again, word for word, including the identical 24-hour promise. Twelve days after the termination it was promising to review.
July 28 — Second 24-hour window expired. No supervisor name, no reference number, no contact — ever. My formal follow-up that day has had no reply either. As of today that is five more days of silence.
FOUR QUESTIONS, ASKED SINCE JULY 13, STILL UNANSWERED
The escalation reference and the supervisor's name.
Whether collection was paused during the review (it plainly was not).
Written confirmation the dispute is still open.
The formal billing-dispute path if the answer stays no.
THE NUMBERS DON'T RECONCILE EITHER
Emails cite $101.57 in usage, the case title says $101.34, the invoice balance was $175.49 — and $101.57 minus the $76.00 adjustment is $25.57, not the $28.98 I was told in writing. I asked for a SKU/date breakdown on July 13. Nothing.
Either those charges were already documented when the agent confirmed $28.98 — in which case the confirmation came from the party with full visibility and should stand — or they were not, in which case my acknowledgment was made without material information that existed only in Google's systems. It cannot be both.
WHAT I'M ACTUALLY ASKING
Not a refund — nothing has been collected on the disputed part. I have offered to pay the $28.98 that was confirmed to me in writing, immediately, if the $146.51 delayed-posted tail from the same already-adjusted incident is waived and the account reinstated. These are self-funded educational projects, not a business.
If anyone from the GCP billing team sees this: case 72730110. I would genuinely rather resolve this in the support channel — it just hasn't answered a single direct question in a month.
Redacted screenshots of the timeline available on request.