Also the billing alerts is just that an alert. They should have something in place to put a hard cap on monthly spend. That way his free website would go offline when he's spent > $X.
I see there is a spending limit for the "intro" or "preview" plans designed for students, Visual Studio users, and resellers (the "hook" part in "hook, line, and sinker").
Not for actual cloud usage, like an actual pay-as-you-go plan where this would be useful.
Yeah, there are trial accounts and things but as far as I know, none of the big cloud providers have a way to say "Under no circumstances are you to charge me for than $X per month even if it means shutting down services."
And the alerts are not instant, at least with Azure - they run reports every 24H or so, and execute alerts every 24H or so. So even if you're careful, you can still be on the hook for a couple of days' worth of spend - which could be very expensive.
Pretty sure fixing deeply technical business to business transparent-but-potentially-terrible pricing models are pretty far down the priority list on things that will get them re-elected right now (not even counting campaign donations).
Contract dispute cases might clarify it, but probably not in the direction any of us is hoping.
