Deducted too much money for TTS, cost management is empty. Where did the money go?

Question

Deducted too much money for TTS, cost management is empty. Where did the money go?

Gerrit Addiks 0

Hello,

I am currently looking for a good Text-To-Speech provider, and it looks like Azure is the top contender at the moment. So I have created a trial Azure account yesterday (The one with the 200€ free credit), created a speech resource and started using the Speech Text-to-Speech REST-API from my application. (The ability to use SSML markup is very useful for me.)

I created speech for at most 2000 characters (probably way less), which according to the payment information website (The one that states that 1.000.000 characters costs about 16$ *) should have deducted about 3 cents (at most) from the free trial credit.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/cognitive-services/speech-services/

But today morning I get the notification "€190.27 credit remaining", so about ten Euro were deducted for something, but I don't know for what. The cost analysis, Billing data, Usage+Quotas, ... are all empty and show 0€ of spent credits.

I deleted the speech resource after seeing that, fearing that it might cause some per-hour cost that was mentioned nowhere. Does having that speech resource cost money per hour, even if not used?

If not, Where did the 10€ go? Is this the way that Azure works, by deducting/charging way more money then expected and not tell you why? If so, then Azure will not be an option for me anymore. Or is the speech resource really that costly, even if not used? That would also be a show stopper for me. I've been searching for an answer all day now, but so far found nothing about this type of issue, it's very irritating. I have to find out what happened here before I can proceed with using azure for my use case.

I also tried creating a support ticket for this, but that seems impossible because this type of issue is not covered by the required "Problem subtype" selection, and using a different subtype requires data from me that I don't have because the problem-type does not match. (I have provided Microsoft with feedback on that, but I doubt that it will help me much with my issue)

Thank you for any clarification that you can provide.

romungi-MSFT 48,916 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator

2023-10-16T10:51:03.61+00:00

@Gerrit Addiks There is no charge for just having the resource created and if no API calls were made for any of the features you will not be billed.

To check now many characters, you were billed you can check the metrics blade of your speech resource and load the metrics graphs and check which API call or feature would have caused the usage. Navigate to Azure portal and search for your speech resource, there should be a menu on the left-hand side to check the metrics of your resource, in the 3rd drop down for metrics select any of the usage metrics to check what is the usage. Since you already deleted the resource, this will not be available for this resource.

Also, for pricing related queries you can raise a support case under issue type Billing and problem type Pricing and select the first subtype to check the service pricing. I understand in this case you have already deleted your resource, if you plan to create a new resource and try out the same scenarios, please check the metrics of your resource to understand the usage and then if you need clarification, please raise a support case. I hope this helps!!

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romungi-MSFT 48,916 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator

2023-10-16T10:51:03.61+00:00

@Gerrit Addiks There is no charge for just having the resource created and if no API calls were made for any of the features you will not be billed.

To check now many characters, you were billed you can check the metrics blade of your speech resource and load the metrics graphs and check which API call or feature would have caused the usage. Navigate to Azure portal and search for your speech resource, there should be a menu on the left-hand side to check the metrics of your resource, in the 3rd drop down for metrics select any of the usage metrics to check what is the usage. Since you already deleted the resource, this will not be available for this resource.

Also, for pricing related queries you can raise a support case under issue type Billing and problem type Pricing and select the first subtype to check the service pricing. I understand in this case you have already deleted your resource, if you plan to create a new resource and try out the same scenarios, please check the metrics of your resource to understand the usage and then if you need clarification, please raise a support case. I hope this helps!!

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Deducted too much money for TTS, cost management is empty. Where did the money go?

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