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.