I created a virtual machine according to https://cloud.google.com/free/docs/free-cloud-features#compute.
But regardless, according to the bills, it spends money from the free trial credits rather than being redeemed through the discount.
Some information about the instance:
Zone: us-central1-c
Machine type: e2-micro
VM provisioning model: Standard
Boot disk: 30GB (Standard persistent disk )
What could be the problem?
Hi @KingoMax ,
Welcome to the Google Cloud Community!
I assume this is the only resource that you provisioned and didn’t use any other Google Cloud Resource (use of IPs, load balancers, etc.).
Expected Behaviour: You are correct that you shouldn’t be losing Free Trial credits since the instance you provisioned is included in the Free Tier.
What You’re Experiencing*:
This discrepancy can occur due to a known issue in Google Cloud’s billing system. In some instances, when there should be a “credit” to offset a charge (so you wouldn’t see an actual cost), an error occurs. Instead of issuing the correct credit, our system unexpectedly applies a negative adjustment. This results in missing the necessary credit to balance the charge. Consequently, future usage, which should have been offset by this credit, ends up using your Free Trial credits.
Why This Happens*:
This issue is sporadic and not something we can consistently reproduce. It tends to occur under specific conditions, such as when an account with Free Trial credits experiences certain types of billing entries (negative debits without the corresponding positive credits).
Unfortunately, you may need to contact the Billing Support team so they may take a look at the backend regarding your issue since there are similar cases before.
I hope this helps. Thank you.
* - Comment according to the product team assigned to the issue, internally.
