The horror stories about Azure’s “free” services turned out to be real

The horror stories about Azure’s “free” services turned out to be real – I just got billed €1300 for testing.

I started with Azure because of the big “Free” banner. Of course, I realize I should always be careful with cloud resources and keep an eye on usage. But Azure makes this nearly impossible: there’s no real budget cap, no kill switch, and the warnings come too late.

After just some small experiments I was suddenly billed €1300 – way beyond what a normal “free” trial should allow.

Trying to resolve this is a nightmare: the website keeps looping, you can’t request a credit anymore, and phone support (who are really nice) but just sends you back to the same site. Hours wasted, zero results.

Other providers like AWS or Google help their customers in these cases – sometimes they even proactively refund unexpected charges to keep trust. Why can’t Microsoft do the same?

I’m requesting a full refund of the €1300. I take responsibility for testing, but Microsoft also needs to take responsibility for fair communication and protecting new users. Otherwise these “Azure horror stories” will just keep scaring people away.