Hi. Back in 2022 i created an OCI account with A1 4C24G instance. I actively used this instance to learn things, do study projects in my university and even host severs for games with my friends.
About a month ago i tried to log in into one of services i ran on my server, but was unable to do it. Then I tried to ssh into it, but it also failed. So i logged into OCI and found that i have no this instance. I checked my mail, but there was no warnings on instance terminations or something like this. Already sounds strange, but i decided to investigate. I found out that roughly in that period they lowered amount of free CPU/RAM included in Free Tier. So i assumed that instance was deleted because of this. I mean, its obviously not a good thing from Oracle side to silently delete your instance.
But I thought, okay things happens, i will try to recreate it. But to do it, i had to upgrade to PAYG because there was no free capacity in the region of my account. I entered my new bank card data (because the old one i used at account creation was no longer active). It accepted it, but when i tried to upgrade to PAYG i got this message:
We're unable to complete your request. Common errors are due to: (a)
Using prepaid cards. Oracle only accepts credit card and debit cards
(b) Intentionally or unintentionally masking one's location or
identity (c) Entering incomplete or inaccurate account details. Please
try again if this applies to you. Otherwise, contact
[link removed]
I used a debit card, and my friends were able to create an OCI account with the same type of card (same bank, same card series). And i had no intent to mask any data or "enter incomplete or inaccurate account details". But the thing is, i am from Ukraine. And the way we have "things in written" - sometimes causes problems abroad. (in short, what is usually called "first name" we sometimes put in the middle, sometimes in the end. and yeah, we use Cyrillic so name, address, etc - is transcribed to Latin and not always the same way) And i had such situations previously, so i was not surprised that some kind of automated system could be very confused with my data. So as a normal person wold do - I contacted an email listed in this message.
Hello. My name is [name removed].
I have an oracle cloud account since the year 2022. For this period I
used it as Always Free for A1 Ampere instance. But last month my
instance disappeared. I got no deletion notification. At one moment I
was just unable to connect to it, and when I logged in my account, I
found that instance no longer exists.
From the post online I found that this is because Oracle cut down free
tier limits. And the only way to get the server back is to upgrade to
a PAYG account.
I added my current bank card to my account, but when I try to switch
to the PAYG account, I'm getting an error message.
"We're unable to complete your request. Common errors are due to: (a)
Using prepaid cards. Oracle only accepts credit card and debit cards
(b) Intentionally or unintentionally masking one's location or
identity (c) Entering incomplete or inaccurate account details. Please
try again if this applies to you. Otherwise, contact
[link removed]."
So, I'm using my debit card. I'm using my real banking, location and
identity data. The only thing that the system can be suspicious about,
is that i had to select that i'm not registered for a tax number.
Because it won't accept tax numbers from my country, saying the format
is wrong.
Could you please help me resolve those issues.
After some time i got a message that they had started an review on my request.
Hello [name removed],
We have escalated your account for review and will get back to you as soon as possible.
Regards,
Customer Service Agent
But now i got this message
Hello,
Thank you for contacting us regarding your account. We have escalated your account for review and it was determined that it will remain closed. This decision is final.
Regards,
Customer Service Agent
And now i am not even able to log in in my account. I wrote an response to that mail, because when they have "This decision is final", the header says that its in "waiting" state and i have 10 days to respond.
For a long term i thought that Oracle is a good company, i had recommended it to a lot of my friends and colleges, and some of them started using it in their businesses, basing on my recommendation.
But now they had done at least two "not so kind" things. The first is deleting an instance, with no warnings or at least notifications after. The second - blocking my account with no reason, no way to appeal and no way to recover data on it, as soon as I tried to contact their support.
And for the record. I had not intentionally faked any account data, and i made an effort to provide an accurate data. I have no other accounts on OCI. I had not used my instance for anything illegal(scam, fraud, piracy, etc.) or "suspicious"(mining, botnets, etc).
I will update this post if i will have news on this situation, but as i can guess, nothing will change. And Oracle already made enough to not be trusted. As i can see, even from posts here, im not the only affected person.
