I was using $1000 Azure startup credits for personal projects, specifically OpenAI APIs and Data Lake. Unfortunately, after my credits expired, I didn't realize some services continued running, and now I've received a bill of around ₹1 lakh. I immediately deleted everything and submitted a ticket to billing support requesting a waiver. I'm looking for advice—has anyone successfully had similar charges waived or reduced? Any tips or do's and don'ts would be greatly appreciated!
3 Answers
Yikes, that sounds rough! Here are a few tips that helped others in similar situations:
- Focus your support ticket on "unexpected charges after credits expired" and request a one-time courtesy waiver.
- Pull the Cost Management reports to highlight the specific services or SKUs that were running after your credits expired.
- If any services were initiated automatically, like diagnostics or managed identities, make sure to mention those.
- Request support to disable pay-as-you-go until you can set budgets or alerts.
In the future, consider setting up budgets, alerts, and auto-shutdown policies to prevent this from happening again. I've got a handy checklist for setup that might help!
Just a heads up, that link you shared doesn’t seem to cover what you mentioned.
Wow, that's about 10k dollars! What are you planning on doing to pay this off?
I can totally relate to your situation. If anyone else has a similar experience, how did it turn out for you?
I’ve heard that the maximum waiver can be around 10k, but it really depends on the circumstances.

Thanks for the suggestions! I’ll make sure to mention those points in my ticket. Really hoping they’ll waive it this time.