[rurp]

If I'm understanding you correctly, the 30 day policy is one that Heroku chose to put in the contract. Engineering might have fought the terms, and yes they need to be followed once set, but it seems totally fair to blame Heroku for creating the limitation in the first place.

[mst]

When they were written, short sighted acquirers yeeting the free tier was likely not something the people writing the relevant clauses were even considering as a possibility, and honestly it's such a ridiculous decision from a commercial perspective that I find it hard to assign blame for not foreseeing it.

Plus, it would all likely have worked out fine if they'd emailed the customer a warning or three like they intended to do - it was the failure to do so combined with the failure to detect and remediate the initial failure that sent things down such a dark path here.