That's not really the case as far as I can tell. I had an old account from learning some of their complementary Azure content via Microsoft and I was able to enter my existing email id and activate the 30 day free content on my account.
it's a bit better - their regular trail is 10 days
Plus no credit card required. Not sure how anyone can call this a bad deal, even if you don't want to use your normal email just use a burner.