Requesting a manual review / dunning-cache flush for our two projects, following the resolution path used in threads 177462, 177570 and 176411.
Since 2026-08-14 10:30 UTC, every Vertex AI call on BOTH projects attached to billing account 01150B-DE04A6-8A230E returns HTTP 403 with the message “Lightning dunning decision is deny for project: projects/2153216446..” and status PERMISSION_DENIED. The identical response is returned for projects/5035973527…
Control test, using the same access token, the same project and the same minute: the Vertex AI endpoint returns 403, while Cloud Storage, Cloud Run and Cloud Resource Manager all return 200. Credentials, IAM and project state are therefore healthy. Only Vertex AI is blocked.
The Vertex AI API is ENABLED on both projects; a disabled API would return SERVICE_DISABLED rather than PERMISSION_DENIED. Both regions tested, asia-south1 and us-central1, fail identically. The billing account status is OPEN and active. Google Cloud Support, cases 71220920 and 71223970, confirm the account is active and in good standing, and cannot see or clear the denial.
We hold a large balance of active promotional credits against a comparatively small invoice currently under discussion with billing. We are not disputing that invoice.
Production has been fully down for over 48 hours. We are a customer-facing AI product serving Indian MSME manufacturers, and every user-facing function depends on Gemini.
Please could someone flush the dunning decision for project numbers 2153216446.. and 5035973527.., or advise the correct escalation path. Happy to provide any verification required. Thank you.