or…not…
I wanted to cancel my account before I got hit up for “hidden charges” or something ridonkulous like that and could not find any way to cancel my subscription short of calling someone on the phone which could be my least favorite thing to do.
From what I could tell, I should be allowed to “opt-out” of an automatic renewal, except I don’t appear to have that option. I am wondering if I am simply not getting a proper user experience because I am part of some trial program, but it is rather annoying to not be able to simply click a button and say “stop charging me at the end of this month”.
As of right now I owe $1.06 for usage charges over the past month. I would be fine with that except for the fact that I was under the impression I was not going to be charged anything at all during my trial period. I find it hard to believe that Microsoft needs my $1.06 that badly but apparently they do. And they also need it again next month, so that may be why they won’t let me cancel my account so easily.
I suppose I could just drop the server I am using, essentially ending any chance of them charging me for SQL Azure altogether, but something tells me they would find a way to keep billing my credit card. So instead I will just open a new credit card, change my billing information to use the new card, and then just cancel the card.
That should take care of them trying to charge me for a trial service they don’t want me to cancel easily. And yeah, I understand that opening the card and closing it is a lot more effort than just calling someone at Azure support, but I am annoyed to the point that I would go out of my way to circumvent the “process” they have configured.
This is one of my primary fears about Azure and why I’ve yet to set up a development sandbox. Sure it’s free* because of my MSDN subscription, but yet they still want my credit card anyway.
Sorry Microsoft, I don’t trust you with an open invitation to bill me for an indefinite amount.
I’d rather you just disable my site when I’ve hit the free limit.
oh, i hadn’t thought of that, good point.
Microsoft has sunk to a new low . . . using “trial traps” . . . yes one must contact customer support to cancel a trial. There’s plenty of opportunity to sign up for more services but they make it very hard to cancel. I called Microsoft support . . . all the options for Azure support were available EXCEPT the one to cancel . . . it says they are CLOSED! I’m just going to tell my cedit card company to charge back all Microsoft fees and move on to open source . . . there’s plenty of free software out there that works suffciently well given the cost. Azure is lack luster to say the least and high priced given the limited services. BTW: I was a devoted Microsoft customer for 15 years . . . I’m also a MCSE . . . but I’m giving up on Microsoft because they really are indifferent, at best, to the impact they have on customers.