HELP Cancel SQL Server License

[John Jenner]

I've been using BigQuery and Datastudio for reporting data and spending around $10/month.  I was trying to figure out how to import a table from a Google Sheet and was floundering around and in the process (very stupidly) signed up for SQL Server 2017 Standard.  Yeah... I know that must sound pretty stupid (and yeah it is) but there was a path that led me there. There really wasn't any explanation that I was going to be incurring major fees, I figured if I didn't end up using it I wouldn't be have to pay for it.  I eventually figured out there was a very easy way to directly import a CSV into BigQuery. However now I'm getting bill for over $100 for the SQL Server.  I need to figure out how to cancel this, but I have no clue what I'm doing.  I went into the SQL Server and deleted the "instance" of SQL I had setup. I don't see anything in my dashboard about SQL Server anymore.  But I'm wondering if I've everything I needed to do.

[Kevin Hirsh]

That is definitely unfortunate, unforeseen costs are never nice to find, especially if these charges have been around for quite some time now. From my understanding you have created a Cloud SQL instance for SQL Server on your project, related to a public quickstart. 

As long as the only resources utilized for your implementation were the Cloud SQL instances, then yes, deleting the instances would prevent further charges from occurring on the Cloud SQL side. If you utilized any other resources such as, App Engine or VPC Networks, in order to utilize the Cloud SQL resources on your project, it is possible that there may be other existing charges.

Compute Engine seems to be another likely candidate for causing charges, if you have made use of compute engine instances using SQL Server.

In this case I would also recommend deleting these instances.

Although not much can be mentioned about SQL Server 2017 and how to manage costs for this product, as it is a third party product managed by Microsoft.

If you have any further inquiries about billing and any further doubts about why your account is being charged, please contact free billing support, they will be the most efficient means of investigating these types of inquiries.

I hope this helps, and good luck!

[John Jenner]

Thanks.  I think I have this figured out. Billing support was sort of helpful except they keep suggesting one way to solve the issue is to shut down my project or account.  I have a couple years work under this account (just reporting stuff with BQ and Data Studio)....so it's a really annoying suggestion.  All I want is to not get billed for something that I setup but didn't use and have deleted.  I'll actually love to have a SQL database that I could play around with building some apps and maybe Cloud SQL is a lot less expensive but this experience with SQL Server has me gun shy.  For many years (years ago) I had a rack of servers setup in my house (they're still in my garage unplugged) using the Microsoft platform, Windows Server IIS, SQL Server that I used for development but it was all Microsoft based.  I've been out of actual development for a number of years so Cloud/google platform type stuff is all sort of new to me.  Working with BQ has been a lot of fun and Data Studio is very good for the price. 

[Olu]

Hello, John

I can actually understand your concern and the need for a testing and learning environment to ease on-boarding to using GCP. This is the reason there is the Google Cloud Free tier option that gives you access to free resources to learn about Google Cloud services and to try out these Services. 

This option is available to you, whether you're completely new to the platform  or not but you need to learn the basics of the Google Cloud platform. I recommend you go through these documentations[1][2] for more information about how you can explore the Free tier option to learn more about the Platform. 

[1]https://cloud.google.com/free

[2]https://cloud.google.com/free/docs/gcp-free-tier