Why are you billing me for something that is free?
Can't really respond to that, though as a paying customer, and someone who knows many people who've used the free tier, I would imagine it was a mistake on your end, although maybe they should have been more clear on Ts&Cs or something. Hard to say without knowing more.
or any of the other "cloud" providers
Google are (in)famous for that problem, AWS I can't honestly say I have any experience with it. But don't just assume it's because they are "cloud" providers. Actually, it's because they are huge companies that, thanks to the (usual) efficiency of their products, can pretty much get away with it.
You say you use Linode and Slicehost, their services are the same as Amazon's EC2, yet you presumably know that their support is pretty great.
I've been testing PHPfog recently and their support, even in beta while I've been paying nothing to use them, has been excellent.
Examples go on and on... it's about the specific companies, not the type of service.
>AWS I can't honestly say I have any experience with it.
I can honestly say because I do have experience with it. Maybe it was something I clicked, but that is classic bait and switch. I would have never even considered AWS if it wasn't free and definitely didn't intentionally buy anything from them (as I said, I already have linode and slicehost, which is more than I need).
I'm not sure where you're going with this. I'm not saying that absolutely every cloud services provider is terrible, I'm saying that my perception of google, and my experience with amazon, is that they are.
Check the activity usage report. They break down in quite a bit of detail where the charges are. You can break it down even further by hour. I've used the Free Tier with no charges for over a month now, and have been pretty happy with it.
The one thing the Amazon Free Tier does charge for which is strange is regional data transfer (transfer between machines on AWS), but they provide you with 15GB of internet data transfer. Very odd.
From the figure ($60) it seems you probably launched an m1.small instance instead of a micro instance. IIRC the free tier only covers a micro instance and those amount to only $14.40/mo when run 24/7.
You say you use Linode and Slicehost, their services are the same as Amazon's EC2, yet you presumably know that their support is pretty great.
I've been testing PHPfog recently and their support, even in beta while I've been paying nothing to use them, has been excellent.
Examples go on and on... it's about the specific companies, not the type of service.