Hello
I just got billed again but I have not used your services at all.
I was testing the multiplayer services on January following your tutorials but gave up.
Now I have been billed again without using anything.
After the first bill I deleted all builds but the second bill was even higher.
I did not get any warning and I did not see any hint in the tutorials how to prevent this.
Please give me a refund.
Kind regards
Marko
Please check your email, as I've responded to the email where you requested more info from our billing team. In short, the charges are for game server hosting - you spun up servers back in January, and then shut them down in February. If you look at page 2 of your invoice, you'll see the specifics of the server regions, models, and hours run. I've also provided the audit logs in the email for the title, showing the details of the servers build that was configured in your title.
The details on our server hosting and its costs (as well as the free hours we provide) are in a few places:
Our documentation - Billing for PlayFab Multiplayer Servers 2.0 - PlayFab | Microsoft Docs
The pricing page on our main site - Pricing (playfab.com)
And the click-through page you have to use to activate game server hosting in your title:
(though please note that we are updating the free hours to be Dasv4, and Av2/Fsv2 will no longer provide free hours - please see our blog post for all the details on that: Azure PlayFab Multiplayer Servers includes free monthly AMD VMs usage evaluation)
Yes, when I was testing it said free for 750 hours but I was only testing for about 5 hours or so, therefore I did not worry. I did not see any instructions how to turn it off. Also I did not see a warning that a test build can accumulate so many hours. Also there is no information how expensive each build is.
I think it would beneficial for any developer to have a price tag next to each server or build.Or maybe a monthly forecast for the complete multiplayer setup.
Also I warning would be great if a certain amount has surpassed. I know it from mobile phone providers where I can set a limit for my monthly roaming costs.
Right now I was forced to pay more than 1500 $ for nothing. This is a huge amount for a mistake and I really would like to get a refund.
What the documentation I liked above states is that when you activate a build, and turn on VMs in it, you're accumulating hours. You choose how many standby servers you want to have active in the build configuration - those are VMs actively running, awaiting users. Whether or not you're currently testing doesn't change the fact that you're running VMs - you need to set your Standby levels to 0 in the regions you have configured to turn them off. I'm not sure what kind of warning you'd expect from that - realistically, there's no way for us to make a call on whether or not your build configuration is "correct", as we don't know what it is you're trying to do, specifically.
The notion of having pricing in the build configuration flow as well is one we're considering making, so definitely appreciate the feedback on that.
That aside, these forums are intended to help answer questions about how to use the service. Most of the folks answering questions here are our support team and other developers. For business questions, please contact us via the Contact Us form in the main PlayFab.com site, so that you can discuss this with a member of the business team.
Thank you for the feedback, I was not able to use "Contact Us" on the main page because it was empty. Now, after investigating it again, I found out that I have to activate the Analytics cookies to make the form work. (Yes, it says something about the cookies, but every website tells me about cookies and I never accept them and those other web sites still work)
thats what also they did to me
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