Microsoft Azure - no meaningful way to contact regarding technical issues for non-profits

We're running some VMs on Microsoft Azure with free credits provided to non-profits. This means that in the Azure support section on the Azure portal, only billing support is visible, not technical support - that would probably need a paid plan. 

There was an intermittent network issue with one of our VMs - Ubuntu update not being able to reach the servers, ssh into the VM failing intermittently, and so on. 

I changed the type of support from Technical to Subscription, and then was able to submit the report.

Some more data points for troubleshooting -

1. Our other Azure VMs in other regions do not have this issue.

2. Some of our team members had issues connecting to this server on Aug 19 2025, between 3 & 7 pm IST. At around 8:45 pm IST, I could log on to the server without issues, I used BSNL as my ISP. On Aug 20, 11:30 am, the team at Hyderabad could not connect to the VM using Jiofiber ISP, but I could connect via Telexair located in Bangalore.

3. Rebooting the VM itself did not help - probably some other routing issue at your Central India location.

Edit 25 Sep - But there was no response from Microsoft other than that they would look into it - but the problem seemed to have been resolved in a few hours. Twenty days later, there was an email from the VM team, saying that the network team had passed on the issue to the VM team, so I just replied, "We have not had issues after my last updated to the ticket. You can call me if you wish between 9 and 11.30 am Indian Standard time or between 12.30 and 3.30 pm IST, but I have nothing further to add."

Google's lack of human support is well known. So, Azure is more of the same. I believe this is the norm for all these "cloud" companies.