Microsoft won't let me pay a $24 bill, blocking thousands in Azure spending

Two years ago, a $24 autopay charge on my Azure account failed. The invoice is now marked "Locked" in their billing portal.

I cannot pay this invoice. There is no button to pay it. There is no button to dismiss it. There is no way to interact with it at all.

Azure displays a banner: "You must pay all previous invoices before creating new subscriptions." Fair enough. I would love to pay it. Microsoft won't let me.

So I tried to contact support.

The Azure portal requires a "paid support plan" to create a support ticket. To purchase a paid support plan, you must create a subscription. To create a subscription, you must clear outstanding invoices. To clear outstanding invoices, you must contact support.

Azure on Twitter, as well as the website claims to have a "free support ticket" option for billing issues, but every possible link just drives you back to the same FAQ page while refusing to let you submit a ticket.

I called every number I could find:

1-800-867-1389 rings busy indefinitely. 1-855-270-0615 connects to an AI that asks what you need, tells you to visit the website, and disconnects. 1-800-642-7676 connects to a different AI that also tells you to visit the website. The website has a chatbot that redirects you to FAQ articles regardless of what you type. If you express frustration, it throws an error and stops responding.

I submitted feedback through the Azure portal every few days for weeks. No response.

I am a software engineer, so I did something ridiculous.

I wrote a PowerShell WinForms application that authenticates via device code flow, queries the Az.Support API for problem classifications, and calls New-AzSupportTicketsNoSubscription to submit a billing support ticket directly, bypassing the portal entirely.

Note the API name: NoSubscription. Microsoft has an explicit API for ticketing without a subscription.

It worked. The ticket was submitted. I felt briefly victorious.

The API responded: "Your support plan type is Free. To create and update support tickets, you need access to our high-tier support plans."

I had built custom software specifically to work around Microsoft's broken support infrastructure, and I still hit a paywall.

The total amount Microsoft is owed: $24.

The total amount Microsoft is preventing me from spending on new Azure services: thousands. I currently run numerous websites out of my house, and it's getting to be enough that I want to offload it to Azure VMs. Additionally, I was going to shift my development to Azure boxes, etc.

I have exhausted every official channel. Every phone number, every chatbot, every feedback form, every API endpoint. There is no path to a human being without first paying for a support plan that I cannot purchase because of the billing block that I need support to resolve.

Has anyone successfully escaped a loop like this? Is there a secret handshake I'm missing? Or is the only option to abandon this Microsoft account entirely, get a new phone, and start fresh?

Have you tried going through Sales? Account teams can usually move mountains if they can see a clear path to a paycheque - you might have luck just by going to the 'chat with me' popup on the azure home page and saying you have thousands of budget and would like to chat with a rep.

Javin007 · 12 days ago

I attempted to say I needed to speak to a sales representative. The AI ran me through the standard question gauntlet.

I closed the browser entirely, reopened it, and then told the AI that I "have a large budget and need to speak to a sales assistant". It then asked one question: "Is this for a business or personal purchase?" I said business, and then boom, immediate connection to a human.

THEY were able to submit the support ticket for me. But their recommendation? Just create a new account entirely. Which, obviously, is NOT an answer.

When your ONLY source of "help" is the only people in the company you can reach telling you to just "give up" on your primary account, I think it's time to switch vendors.

whizzter · 12 days ago

Salespeople are often non-tech despite working for tech-firms, non-tech people are the ones who usually create messes by workarounds since they often quickly give up instead of reporting.

If the non-reporting is a problem of the non-techs or techs at a company is an open question, but it's often a shared problem connected to non-techs coming with stupid things at one point and fundamentally important stuff at other times.

Anyhow, they usually should know how to get proper escalation to get shit done when hounded enough.

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Javin007 · 12 days ago

Honestly? As obvious as that seems, I didn't think of it. I'll try that now.

bityard · 12 days ago

You have a lot more perseverance than I do. I would have opened up an AWS or GCP account after step one. I'm the one with the money and any company that makes it difficult for me to give it to them isn't worth my time.

Not even kidding, despite being tied to Azure here at work, I'm TEMPTED to spin my stuff up on AWS and use it to convince my branch to switch to AWS for future projects. That will move their losses into the tens of thousands per month if I can convince them.

SlightlyLeftPad · 8 days ago

I had the almost same experience as OP. Only difference is that I really wanted to play Minecraft.

machomaster · 11 days ago

Or even better, to use this opportunity to set up your own servers saving money and hassle in the long run.

Galxeagle · 12 days ago

SamWhited · 12 days ago

Doesn't help fix your problem, but I have a similar issue with Google Cloud Platform. Years ago I had a free workplace account that I had some small company emails and what not on, and apparently at some point over the years I setup a GCP project or two. Fast forward to the modern day and I haven't used the account in years so I decide to delete it. As the admin I hit the delete account button and it complains that I have services still active, so I go disable all the services which includes removing the workplace subsccription with all my billing info. I then hit delete again, at which point it complains that I have a project on GCP (not active, just created). So I go to delete it... which requires having a (paid) workspace account. So I can't delete the unused project without paying to re-activate the workspaces account I deleted, and I can't delete the whole account without deleting the GCP project. And of course Google has literally no support, so I just have a Google account hanging out there somewhere, probably with vaguely sensitive information from years ago on it, waiting for someone to guess the password or otherwise get into it.

BLKNSLVR · 12 days ago

The universe is saving you from spending money on Microsoft services. This is a good thing, stop trying to fight it and find a better, more worthy alternative.

beefnugs · 11 days ago

Funny enough i think AI everywhere will in fact give such a nice clear push with a smile on its face to small companies and individuals away from business with the big companies.

Divine goodness can find cracks through the evil veil of capitalism

rdtsc · 12 days ago

Do you have to use Azure? Maybe Azure is nice and signaling this way the state of the internals and how things will work from here on. So it's sneakily trying to help you move to somewhere else, before things become worse and you spend the thousands and then end up stuck.

:D It's a valid argument. Perhaps they're quietly trying to do me a favor? Unfortunately, my company has gone this direction, so they're stuck in my sphere whether I like it or not.

dylan604 · 12 days ago

That's fine as it is your company's money. You, however, do not need to give Microsoft any of your money. I get it's convenient as you're already using it at work so the familiarity is convenient. It's why I've used AWS for a couple of side hustle projects because I had familiarity from using it at work. Trying to unthink AWS to learn to think like GCP/Azure would have only slowed me down on the side hustle.

It's definitely damned if you do, damned if you don't regardless of which cloud provider is being discussed. They all have their own thorns

anxman · 11 days ago

If you want to sign Windows binaries, Azure is the best way now.

justinclift · 11 days ago

Why do you say that? Things like SignPath exist: https://signpath.io/knowledge-base/introduction

We've been using them for over a year now for signing the DB Browser for SQLite executables: https://sqlitebrowser.org/blog/signing-windows-executables-o...

mrinterweb · 12 days ago

I ran into a similar issue with Hetzner. I had an outstanding bill that I forgot about (going to an email inbox I don't check often). They closed my account, and I haven't been able to pay the bill. I've tried contacting support, but I haven't got anywhere. I would love to pay the bill. I would really like to use Hetzner again, but I think I accidentally got banned. Also, I'm talking about an $8 dollar debt owed I accrued while not realizing my autopay was failing on a VM.

Hetzner_OL · 6 days ago

Hi there, I am sorry you had this negative experience us with us. For very late invoices, we lock accounts and ask that users pay using a bank/wire transfer. https://docs.hetzner.com/general/others/late-payments-faqs Was your account fairly new? We tend to be more careful with newer accounts because of fraud and abuse. If an invoice is very late, we do not re-open the account until the invoice is paid. (Again, because of fraud and abuse). But our support teams would very likely have asked you to pay using a bank/wire transfer. It's not that we don't want people to pay their invoices. We just want them to use a more reliable form of payment once that happens. If you still have access to your old invoice (perhaps you still have your email with it), you can still pay it. Your customer number will be on your invoice and you can use that or the invoice number in the reason for the payment. Since it is far in the past, we could not re-activate your account. It might be possible, however, to create a new account. --Katie

Wow. You're the second person to mention Hetzner doing this same mess. I hadn't heard of them prior to this. Their reputation is preceding them.

Yeah. Avoid Hetzner.

I used to use and recommend them, but not any more. Screw them. :(

jauntywundrkind · 12 days ago

Hetzner has a similar loop. Autopay fails and they lock your account, keeping you from logging in to pay it.

I emailed support, &bthey insisted on a wire transfer. I sent that & they said they didn't get it. I sent them all the details my bank could find, but they kept asking for some paper document, which doesn't exist afaik because it was all done online.

Hi there, (I am not trying to be critical. I am genuinely curious what could have gone wrong in your case.) Are you sure that they were asking for a *piece of paper*, or for a confirmation number for the bank/wire transfer? Our team will sometimes ask for the confirmation number to help speed up the process on our end. Some people also underestimate how much time it can take for a payment like this to arrive at our billing team. When you sent the payment, did you include your Hetzner customer number or invoice number in the reason for the payment when you filled at the form for the bank/wire transfer? If you didn't do that, it is much more difficult for our team to process that payment. --Katie

tormeh · 12 days ago

That sounds so incredibly German. They love paper, and have zero understanding when that paper simply doesn't exist in a non-German system.

croes · 12 days ago

Paper works offline and with electricity

Wow. I'm not familiar with Hetzner, but it sounds like that's a good thing.

jauntywundrkind · 11 days ago

It's a pity to me, because they have an incredible set of offerings that are very reasonably priced. Alas that they are so bad at taking money.

voidsnax · 12 days ago

I recently tried to sign up for the Microsoft Partner Network and the entire experience was grueling and excruciating from start to finish. I wasted two days on it and never managed to sign up.

lateforwork · 12 days ago

Two days? I have been trying for 2 fucking years! I initially registered with <foo>corp.com domain email because that's what I use for Office 365 email account. They denied saying my domain doesn't match. So I tried to change the domain to <foo>.com and it appears to do it, but they keep saying they are still seeing the original domain. The entire Partner Network site is incredibly buggy, half of the site errors out. Their support is a total waste of time, they keep copy/pasting the same message over and over.

anon84873628 · 11 days ago

Sounds similar to my problem. At some point my Microsoft account was linked with an old startup email as a backup. I've updated it to fully remove it and set my gmail as primary. Yet I am still receiving subscription/billing emails to that old address, which fortunately is being forwarded. The UI simply does not reflect reality.

When I contact Support I tell them the whole problem at the start. Then eventually an agent comes on and asks me a dumb question. If I don't respond quickly enough they close the chat and the whole process restarts.

Have you ever tried to just simply set up an Azure VM that you can remote RDP into?

It's literally easier to just set up a fully functional active directory network in your basement.