3-Month Trial Disabled - After only 1 day ...

Question

On Tuesday we signed up for the 90-day of free Trial for Windows Azure.   All we wanted to do was check out the Azure Platform and create a simple SQL DB to test performance.   

Day 1:  Created a Azure SQL DB.   We didnt know any better so we selected "Business" edition DB instead of the other option "Web" Edition.   When we tried playing with the cloud DB we quickly discover it was read-only since we were the 'free' Azure edition.   Ok, we deleted the DB and recreated it as "Web Edition".  Successfully played with this DB all day, so far so good. 

Day 2:  Received a MS Email  message that our Azure account was "Disabled".   After a couple of valuable hours we discovered that our Azure was disabled because we inadvertently created a "Business Edition DB" which exceeded the 0$ limit.   No way back to 'Enabled" , even though we deleted the DB and redid as a Web Edition.    Account is totally Disabled (i.e. worthless)  until June 8th, the next billing cycle.

Day 3 and beyond:  We’ll look at the Amazon AWS Cloud alternatives for the next month or so since MS has locked us out of the Azure trial.

Way to go Microsoft!    Very disappointing. 

John

Answer 1

Create a new LiveID and sign up for a new trial. Takes a few minutes and you'll be back up and running. I'd also recommend fully reviewing the benefits of the free trial so you understand what comes with it and don't accidently exceed any of the other limits that are in place (such as transactions which will get exhausted pretty quick if you enable storage analytics).

Answer 2

Hi,

You can also ask Microsoft Support for more details about your subscription:
http://support.microsoft.com/select/Default.aspx?target=assistance&sd=gn

Hope this helps.

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Answer 3

A new LiveID?  Really?   Isn't that sort of the of a silly way around an obvious problem?   Microsoft Azure team really needs to make the free trial NOT DISABLE itself after 1 day, no matter what.  Or at least allow us to reset the trial to continue with our evaluation in day 2+.   

There's no way we're going to go to the hassle to recreate a new redundant LiveID.   That's just wrong.

If this is how MS handle prospective business clients for Azure, what's one to expected as a paying customer?   So far we have to assume it'll be one gotcha after another.   Like this 30 day delay for us, waiting for our Disable account to be reenabled.  

Answer 4

Thanks Arwind, but that link is the generic MS support page, no thanks.

We did call the MS Azure support line on Friday Day 4, they gave us the same answer that we have to wait 30 days for the account to be recycled and reactiviated to resume/begin the free trial.  Wow.

Answer 5

You hit the “spending limit” on your account.

This is in place so that when running a “free trial” you won’t incur any charges at all.  As you noted, you created the business edition database that is greater than the free trial allows, so the system made sure that you didn’t incur any charges.

You can get back up and running by simply going and removing your spending limit as noted here - https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/spending-limits/

As long as you keep your usage within the limits of the free trial you shouldn’t incur any charges.  If you do get a bill and you feel your usage was within the free limits excluding your creation and deletion of the business database, you can contact support and they can work with you to get that cleared up.

https://support.microsoft.com/oas/default.aspx?gprid=14928&st=1&wfxredirect=1&sd=gn