It can be confusing to receive an overdue payment notice after purchasing a resource plan. Here are the most common reasons why this happens and how you can check what's going on with your account.
If your account has an overdue balance for more than 7 days, all data in your OSS buckets will be permanently deleted. This happens even if you have an active resource plan. Please resolve any overdue payments immediately to prevent data loss.
Step 1: Diagnose the problem
Before reading the detailed reasons below, check these two things first. This will help you quickly identify the issue:
Check your bill details: Query bills to see a line-by-line breakdown of your charges. Look for the specific items that were not covered by your plan.
Check your resource plan usage: View the usage details of a resource plan to see if your plan's quota was used up or if it applies to the correct region and service.
Step 2: Understand the reasons for extra charges
Here are the four main reasons you might have an overdue payment:
Reason 1: Your plan doesn't match the specific service you're being charged for
A resource plan only covers specific types of fees. Think of it like a "buy one, get one free" coupon that only works for a specific product.
Common mismatches:
Storage class mismatch: Your storage plan's type must exactly match your data's storage type.
Example: A Standard locally redundant storage (LRS) plan cannot cover fees for Infrequent Access (IA) data.
Example: A LRS plan cannot cover fees for zone-redundant storage (ZRS) data.
Fees that resource plans don't cover: Some fees are always "pay-as-you-go" and cannot be covered by a resource plan.
API calls: Fees for making API requests are not covered by any resource plan.
Fees that require a different type of plan:
Outbound traffic: If users download data from your OSS bucket, it generates outbound traffic fees. You need a specific outbound traffic plan to cover this.
CDN traffic: If you use Alibaba Cloud CDN with OSS, it can generate CDN origin traffic fees. You need an origin traffic plan for that.
Reason 2: Your plan's region doesn't match where your fees were generated
Resource plans are region-specific.
Example: A resource plan purchased for the China (Hangzhou) region cannot be used to pay for fees generated by a bucket in the China (Shanghai) region.
Reason 3: You used more resources than your plan covers
Your resource plan has a limited quota (such as 100 GB of storage or traffic).
Example: You purchased a 100 GB outbound traffic plan, but you used 110 GB this month. Your plan will cover the first 100 GB, but you will be charged for the extra 10 GB on a pay-as-you-go basis.
Solution: Upgrade your resource plan to get a larger quota.
Reason 4: The bill was generated before your plan became active
There can be a short delay in Alibaba Cloud's billing system.
Example: Your new resource plan started at 09:00. At 10:00, you receive a bill. This bill might be for usage that occurred before 09:00 and is therefore not covered by your new plan. We recommend checking the timestamp on your bill.
Still have questions?
To learn about all possible charges, see Billing.
To stop all future charges from OSS, see How do I deactivate OSS or stop OSS from charging my resources?