Hey everyone,

I wanted to share my experience with Google Cloud / Vertex AI to warn others about a serious issue I believe borders on deceptive billing.

Like many others, I received an email inviting me to try Vertex AI with $300 in free credits and a promise of no automatic charges. The sign-up page clearly states: • “No automatic charges” • “You only start paying if you manually activate pay-as-you-go”

I believed this and proceeded with the trial, entering my card details only for identity verification, as required.

💸 What Happened

To my shock, I was billed $80 a few days later — without any clear warning or notification that I had crossed a threshold or activated any billable service.

After disputing the charge, Google Support reduced it to $42 but refused a full waiver, claiming their internal team reviewed it and stood by the charge.

I know others have been silently charged, thinking they were safe under the “free trial” banner.

I subscribed to Google AI Pro, intending to try it out and potentially continue using the service. The subscription screen clearly stated "1-month free trial" and "$0 USD for 1 month." However, immediately after applying for the subscription, I was charged for one month's fee, for which I then requested a refund.

This refund process involved significant difficulty and waiting. I had to navigate through multiple web pages to process the refund, and it took three days for the refund to be completed. Furthermore, I was subsequently blocked from utilizing the Google AI Pro free trial.

In such a scenario, one has to wonder who can truly trust Google's handling of such matters, or who would want to use this subscription service.

I was experimenting with the Google AI Pro free trial and noticed almost all of the features can be used on the free plan. Gemini 2.5 Pro and Veo 2 can all be used on the AI Studio website, and the NotebookLM app is accessible for free users too. The only exclusive upgrade would be their new Flow app and the 2TB drive storage, but is that really worth $20 a month?

TLDR: Saying yes to a "free" trial of google one with AI access killed my existing subscription. Was the trial a scam?

Longer story: I've been on a 2TB google one subscription for a few years now. My last annual payment for it was in November 2023, with the next one scheduled for November 2024. In March 2023 I was asked if I wanted to try out their AI 2TB plan, which I understood to be what I had but with access to their gemini premium chatbot. It was to be a several-month trial with no payment until August 2023, at which point it'd be a monthly thing totaling about 2 to 3 times what I was currently paying for the non-AI-premium 2TB thing. I thought I'd try it, so said yes. About a month later, finding the chatbot stuff redundant to other things I had from other providers, I went to cancel my trial. Canceling went fine. However, I then learned that my regular 2TB plan no longer existed. That is, it still seems to exist and is advertised, but they won't sell it to me. They will only sell me the expensive AI 2TB plan, or things even more expensive. Worse, the 1-year regular subscription I paid for in November was now set to expire in August, at the end of my AI trial period. Am I missing something? This feels like fraud.

Had a 2 TB Google One plan, paid yearly plan until 25 Feb 2025.
I bought a Pixel 8 pro, got 4 months of free Google One Premium.

I made the big mistake of activating the "free trial", this is a scam, they converted my 2 TB Google One plan to Premium AI, being a more expensive plan, so now the yearly plan I had already paid for ends on February 5. Moreover, I think the old plan doesn't exist anymore, they scammed me out of it.

So instead of 4 months for free, I get 20 days removed from my yearly plan. The premium AI features I was curious to try, but I think it is too early, they are going to be useless.

Realized this after 1 hour of activating it, chatted with support, nothing to do! Anyone has suggestions?