Always free ... to go

Last week I attended Oracle's two-day Oracle Cloud Infrastructure marketing workshop. It's turned out that there are way more marketing than I'd expect. There were a lot of talks about how the Oracle's "NextGen" Cloud is better than all the other public cloud providers and how Oracle stands out among all the other vendors with always free offerings.

Why, it's an excellent chance to move your home lab to the cloud, that what I thought. Sure thing, the first I had to share was my credit card information. Not the best start for free stuff, isn't it? Anyway, I have finished registration and got my very own namespace and account and nice-looking interface. It was promising and somewhat exciting. I have completed my labs and messed around with a free database.  In the end, I have trashed everything and disconnected with the big plans in mind.

Now, a week later, after registration, I cannot create a free instance with public IP address. I spent hours before giving up. Whenever I choose a  paid option, there is enough computer power, even for big shapes.

I still have my $299.81 credit and would use it, but I'm a bit confused.
Is it your Cloud 2 infrastructure not as good as you boasting, or your always free components more like a public restroom in some cafeterias: It's free, but a access code is on the check.

UPDATE: I finally get my always free instance provisioned (conspiracy aside), so be ready; it takes a while.