An Indian college student has found himself in an unexpected financial crisis after following his institution’s requirement to use Google Cloud Platform (GCP) for academic coursework. The student, identified as Girish Naik, recently shared his ordeal on a public forum, revealing he was hit with a cloud service bill totaling nearly ₹1,00,000 (approximately ₹98,940).

Naik stated that his college made the use of GCP mandatory and required students to register a billing method for lab assignments. He insists he only utilized the services specified by his instructors and did not consciously activate or use any premium or expensive resources beyond the scope of his classwork.

The situation has rapidly escalated. Naik is now receiving “past-due balance” notices from a US-based collections agency, ABC Amega, following failed attempts by Google Payments to charge his registered payment method.

The student’s attempts to seek recourse from his college have been unsuccessful, as the institution has reportedly failed to respond to his queries about the unexpected charges.

Seeking advice, Naik turned to the online development community for guidance on how to dispute the bill. Commenters suggested that cloud service providers, including Google and competitors like Amazon Web Services (AWS), often grant waivers to students who accidentally incur high costs, advising him to immediately contact Google support and explain the situation. Other users speculated that the charges likely resulted from a “rookie mistake,” such as forgetting to shut down a costly virtual machine or service instance that continued to run and accrue fees.