I am trying to: Tell you about a terrible experience using Bing maps on my site.
Link to a page where the issue can be seen: I took the map down--the issue has been resolved. But you should be aware of what happened to me. I got an Azure API for my Bing Map I put on my AlvinHighSchool1975.com site. I wanted to map where my 300 or so AHS classmates lived. I made a field for just the city and state because I did not want to publicly show their addresses. In October, I worked on the map and got the pins to show up. I did not make the page with the map live for anyone to see. I realized all the pins would collapse on to one pin in Alvin where most of the people lived (and so was not very useful) and I would have to think further about what to do. So I worked no further on the map.
In November, I got a bill from Microsoft for $13,746 dollars!!!! It took six weeks for them to resolve the bill. I am not sure what happened or why I was getting billed, as no one was accessing the map. They removed the charge and I closed my Azure account. But not after many sleepless nights wondering how I rung up a bill so large without doing anything but adding the pins. MS never explained what happened except to say a machine learning script did something.
I expected to see: a Free map
Instead, I got: a $13,000 charge!
Wow - I'm stunned! That is an outrageous bill, and I can't imagine how something like this would have happened on a site that had such limited use. Was MS able to point to the source of the "machine learning script" that caused this, the specific API endpoints involved, or provide any additional technical information we could use to help prevent such problems from the Toolset side?
We're working to implement OpenStreetMap in a release in the near future, so hopefully adding that option will prevent issues like this in the future, but I'm sorry to hear you had such a troubling experience.
Christian, Thanks for replying and commiserating with me. I too was stunned. Support was trying to tell me how i got billed and they thought an average bill was about $100. And at first they offered to knock off $1000 --but I didn't take that offer. Haha. Apparently the maps were pinging the server constantly. Microsoft was very cagey about telling me what had gone wrong. The only hint I got was about the AI script. I wondered if my particular configuration had set off something they hadn't planned on. Maybe because I I already had a MS 365 account ? That is how I found out about the bill. I got a notice that MS wanted another credit card because the bill was so high it exceeded my set credit limit. Luckily the bill wasn't a bit lower or it would have charged and I don't know how long it would have taken to get my money back. Since MS didn't want to explain further about what happened, I assume it was their fault some how. But yeah, it would be nice to know what it was so you could protect your customers. So, I guess you have to reply again so I can say my issue is resolved. I didn't have an issue, but I didn't know where else to give you this information.
Okay I appreciate the feedback. I'll share this with the team so our other supporters are aware that you had this experience, and if we begin receiving multiple similar reports we have some record of the history here. I will close out the ticket for now.
