Microsoft can ask for name, phone number etc, but credit card shouldn't be a requirement for people who just want to sign up for the Azure for the first time and try it for Free.
once they choose to expand their abilities and purchase more resources and plans then sure credit card can be used.
Haughom , there must be other ways to avoid this. To me, asking for a credit card for an alleged free trial account seems... a fake offer. I'm sorry, but this is the first impression I get.
MarcosValois wrote:Haughom , there must be other ways to avoid this. To me, asking for a credit card for an alleged free trial account seems... a fake offer. I'm sorry, but this is the first impression I get.
absolutely,
verification by address, phone number, Email address.
the thing is that even prepaid cards don't work (I've tried), you need to have a bank account associated with your card.
for a free trial service, this requirement shouldn't be there.
But your trial is still a cost to those companies - in Azure's case you are still using resources; power, compute, storage, the infrastructure set up to run resources.
I imagine some bean counter counter has figured out all the variables on the most effective way they can entice orgs to try Azure with the least cost to them and the highest retention rate. Throwing up an additional barrier like needing a credit card is going to reduce the amount of people gaming the system and the cost to MS. Setting up 5 new gmail accounts is relatively non-trivial compared to applying for 5 credit cards. I suspect there's probably some psychology involved about putting your credit card info in at the start so it's already ready when the trial ends, but that kind of stuff is beyond me.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Fact is, Spotify have their own guys to work out the money and figure they can give people 3 months free and the retention rate is sufficient for that to make financial sense to them. Fwiw, I believe AWS also requires a credit card to sign up.
HotCakeX
Yes your are right, Microsoft should remove the credit card registration when signing up for a free Azure account.
Is it real money LOL.
If they are offering free then why are they asking about credit card information..
