Surprise, Pay $1000(forestwalk.ai)
106 pointsby apike10 hours ago21 comments
  • rcleveng3 hours ago
    WoW. That's certainly a surprise to me. I'd never expect an invoice after not putting in a card.

    I also believe this is totally just a case of "billing and metering is hard, and may actually be a larger engineering effort than your actual service".

    I was just looking at them earlier today since our Github actions are slow AF, and while they sounds great, this tells me it'll cost me more time to make sure I babysit it than most other trials.

    With most of these, they end, the service stops working, and you have a choice to make: (a) it was worth it sign up, (b) not worth it revert.

    • kylegalbraith2 hours ago
      Founder of Depot [0] here. Feel free to try us out. We have a real free trial that is time based that doesn’t do odd things like this. Also have usage limits that you can put in place to further clamp down on runaway surprises.

      [0] https://depot.dev

  • keylean hour ago
    This doesn't seem like the right way to do business long terms. The off chance that someone actually take you up on it and pay your 'bill', you've destroyed a lot of goodwill and alerted the rest of the tech world of your scammy moves.
    • dheeraan hour ago
      Also for those that require a credit card for a free trial, I always use a virtual card and cancel it. It's super fun to watch them cry when they can't actually charge you.
      • greyb18 minutes ago
        They will usually refund you if you end up getting charged because you forgot to cancel. It isn't worth the headache of a chargeback.

        Plus they have to pay a fee for chargebacks regardless of whether they think it's valid or not, so strong disincentive.

        • dheera10 minutes ago
          It's way easier to just not give them a way they can charge you. That way you don't have to deal with a support representative fakely asking you how your weekend was, and who doesn't actually care about your weekend.
  • gblargg2 hours ago
    > In order to use the Blacksmith Software Inc Service, You must set up an account. During the account setup process, You will be required to connect your GitHub account and install Blacksmith’s GitHub integration in your org, and add a valid payment method, such as a credit card, which will be processed through Stripe. Alternatively, for larger contracts, You may request to be billed via invoice.

    > By providing payment information, You authorize us to charge Your credit card for usage fees or, in the case of invoice-based contracts, agree to make timely payments as specified in the invoicing terms.

    Unless this guy had a larger contract and requested to be billed via invoice, this is a violation of terms and he should tell them to stuff it.

  • zarzavatan hour ago
    This reminds me of the business practices of the Austrian NIC. Usually domain names expire if you don't renew them. In Austria, unless you explicitly cancel the domain name by fax, they just roll the registration over to the next year and then send you to collections[1] if you don't pay up.

    There's no rule that domain names expire unless you renew them, at least for ccTLDs. It's just a convention. Conventions lead to assumptions, and assumptions can be used to scam people.

    In general there's two types of businesses: businesses where you pre-pay (e.g. McDonalds), and businesses where you post-pay (e.g. a sit-down restaurant). If you take a conventionally pre-pay service and apply post-pay pricing to it, you have yourself a perfect scam.

    [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1bnjus/the_austri...

  • protocolture41 minutes ago
    Years ago I got my first internet enabled mobile, and the carrier advertised it as having "300 free minutes" as part of the trial period, which is great. So I used 297 minutes of internet services in the first month, but aha actually the minutes only referred to telephony, and I was stung with a ~12,000 dollar overdue mobile internet invoice (360 dollars per megabyte or something equally ludicrous)

    They got done in by a massive class action, that I was tangentially a beneficiary of, not because of the minutes claim, which was standard practice, but because they had failed to provide anyone with the cost of the data.

    I think I paid them 300 bucks or something in the end. After further letting a 600 dollar agreement go to collections and settling with collections for 50%.

  • yellow_leadan hour ago
    BlackSmith should get in this thread and explain themselves.

    Also, can the author tell us how much this would have cost on GH actions?

  • arjie2 hours ago
    Ah, too risky to try for small operators. Good to know. Thanks for the fair warning.
  • MrAlex94an hour ago
    > This question is for us: will we keep using Blacksmith, despite them giving us an unpleasant surprise and a prickly support exchange?

    Well, there are other drop-in GHA runner services, so I wouldn’t see why anyone would be tied into a specific provider.

    Namespace.so are one and my experience with their support has been incredibly positive. Great team there.

    Honourable mention to WarpBuild as well, who I used before them.

  • aaronblohowiakan hour ago
    I can see their logic - instead of breaking people's builds, they are being the nice guys and letting you pay them back later. BUT, any time you break convention, you've dipped into your trust budget (even if you communicate it way more clearly than was apparently done here.)
  • usernametaken2943 minutes ago
    This reminds me of OpenAI which allows you to overcommit on prepaid tokens and then tries to force you into paying overpaid charges. Only they really can’t. You can’t make someone pay for a service they didn’t agree to with billing that doesn’t exist. I wish OpenAI best of luck with their shenanigans
  • nullbioan hour ago
    Infisical does this too. They don't make it clear that they charge you for projects and machine identities upfront, and then you get slammed with a $800 bill on your first month.
  • datadrivenangel3 hours ago
    Sounds like a business partner who will squeeze you again later
  • dd8601fn3 hours ago
    That sounds sketchy AF.
  • kelnos36 minutes ago
    That's incredibly scummy. Article author estimates that "only" 5% of people would expect this outcome for a "try for free", "no credit card required" service, but I think that number is well below 1%.

    Can't believe they continued using the service after this. I would refuse to pay (they have no legal basis to require payment, and their own terms of service seems to disagree with their behavior) and find a more ethical provider.

  • tuananhan hour ago
    You should give Depot a try :)
  • lmm15 minutes ago
    Holy shit, all that and then they paid? Worse, decided to use this product on an ongoing basis? I'm not sure who I hate more, Blacksmith for doing this or OP for being such a doormat about it.
  • scared_together4 hours ago
    How exactly would BlackSmith enforce the overdue payment? By sending the user to court?
    • valleyeran hour ago
      Yes, civil legal proceedings (and/or hiring a collections agency) are generally how debts are pursued in the United States.
    • tadfisher3 hours ago
      Unlikely. But it is likely they will need to pay before resuming usage as a paying customer.
  • mistermucklean hour ago
    By reading this comment, you agree, etc., etc.

    ...boilerplate...

    ...more boilerplate...

    Terms... and conditions...

    ...limitations...

    ...liabilities...

    • mistermucklean hour ago
      You now owe me $500.
      • mistermucklean hour ago
        The $500 is now overdue.
        • somewhatgoated23 minutes ago
          By reading this comment, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.
  • zephenan hour ago
    tl;dr:

    "Don't do this. It works, but I don't like it."

    It seems like a perfectly cromulent business practice to me, unless they start suing people who didn't give them credit cards.

    You use the service. You're told, after awhile, that you've racked up a bill. You keep using the service. You're told your racked up bill is bigger.

    And yet, the reason you're using the service after the first bill is because you find it valuable.

    You have two choices. Pay up to keep using it, or stop.

    The fact that you decided to pay up to keep using it is actually, imo, a pretty good advertisement for the service.

  • vee-kay2 hours ago
    [dead]
  • nailer3 hours ago
    Blacksmith are wrong, but also they’re a YC company- they may be young founders that haven’t run a SaaS before and genuinely don’t know how to handle free trials.
    • nullbioan hour ago
      Doesn't take a genius to figure this one out. If you can't understand this before it becomes a problem, you have no place running a SaaS business.
    • garbagewoman2 hours ago
      Give the growth hackers the benefit of the doubt, you reckon?
    • readthenotes13 hours ago
      Or: they know exactly how to handle free trials