You’re trying to be snarky to GP, why exactly? Yes there are bad faith actors that might try to get some free cash out of cloud refunds. And other customers can also be good faith actors and included in the assertion.

The post applies to everyone and I’d second it. Ask nicely for a refund in these situations, the worst that can happen is they say no.

Where did they say that “only Troy Hunt shall receive a refund, for only Troy Hunt is a good faith actor, so say we all”?

No snark intended. It's just that I would assume that all customers of such services are in principle good faith actors, not just Troy.

The one thing that is special about Troy is that he is providing a service for the public good but that has nothing to do with being 'good faith' or not.

The response was snarky but it's meaning is true. Troy Hunt will get the refund without any problems because he is a public figure. But if a John Doe will make the same mistake he can only hope someone at AWS/Azure/GCP will lift his fees too - which is not guaranteed!

I think there's a dozen people in this thread who have gotten refunds and not a person saying they were refused?

The point is that if they give refunds to all the good actors they won't make any money.

If you have a long time customer (especially one who brings in as much good publicity as Troy Hunt) and you look at their billing history this spike would be a clear anomaly. Writing off an $8k bill to keep a customer around and happy for years to come is worth more than that bill.

Only if their regular services run at a loss and their business model relies on people making mistakes.

But Azure’s regular prices are definitely high enough that they’re not a loss leader.

> The point is that if they give refunds to all the good actors they won't make any money.

That assumes the only way they make money is on peoples understandable mistakes or lack of care. Doesn't seem to be the case for these services (unlike, say, many gym subscriptions).

It seems far more likely that if they refunded all the well documented issues like this one, their bottom line wouldn't be impacted.