Windows Azure Trial get charged, I'm quite surprised, anybody got the same problem?

Question

Dear all,

The background of this is: My company does web application development, we currently hosted clients in other hosting provider. I was tasked with evaluating Windows Azure hosting option and report back the finding.

I chose the 90 days free trial, I created a hello world app, choose 10 instance and test it once, it works, great, everything seems easy to use and easy to manage. Then 2 weeks before trial expires, I remove the app, also then canceled the subscription and start working on my report for the company.

Then, I got nice surprise with my credit card got charged with $600+AUD for Nov and $500+AUD for Dec!!! I did not see any confirmation or warning when I deploy the hello world app, no questions asked when deploy 10 instances. I have evaluated other hosting providers, they always have me "upgrade subscription" or "confirm" if it is beyond my subscription availability.

I have spoken to billing complaints, they explain to me the 10 micro instances stake up roughly 600AUD a month of compute time, I understand it after they show me where to look for past bill (i didnt know it is there, my stupidity, I just rely on windows to send me bill via hotmail which I didnt see them - unless they get caught up in spam filter!)

Anyway, I really want to complain here that, this is really sneaky, catching people who trial it off-guard. My report currently say excellent most things but these 2 bills for sure hit me hard.

Anybody suggest what I can do in this case?

Answer 1

Hi,

You can contact our customer support on https://support.microsoft.com/oas/default.aspx?prid=14234&st=1&wfxredirect=1&sd=gn. When you contact our customer support, please keep following up with our billing support to see how to handle this case.

 

Best Regards,

Ming Xu.

---

Please mark the replies as answers if they help or unmark if not.
If you have any feedback about my replies, please contact [e-mail].
Microsoft One Code Framework

Answer 2

Hi,

You signed up before 12 Dec 2011 right?

Before 12 Dec 2011 there was no simplified risk free trial and that should be the reason why you have that bill.

After 12 Dec 2011 they have a risk free trial, that means that your deployment will be stopped before incurring for costs.

You are not the first that didn't read properly about what you were signing up for, that's a mistake that unfortunately some people have made.

This problem was somehow solved by "risk free trial".

---

If you found this post useful, Please "Mark as Answer" or "Vote as Helpful". Best Regards.