Forum Discussion
The new commerce platform documentation conflicts that caused extra charges
We are a Microsoft CSP and we have placed an order in December 2021 as one year annual commitment. At the time, we got charged for the whole order value which was fully paid upfront afterwards.
By end of April, due to obeying the encouragement of Microsoft to migrate legacy clients to the new commerce experience, we did the migration from Legacy to NCE with same subscription terms and conditions and while we got the prorated refund based on Legacy old prices prevailing at the time order was submitted, the remaining duration of the subscription was charged at the new (higher) prices of NCE. Resulting in a difference of $ 35 K. Because of this confusion we are facing an inconvenient situation since our client won’t pay the difference between the two rates because he doesn’t request us to do the migration.
When we did the migration, we didn’t have any kind of warring or consent that told us that we could pay for the new experience by its new price not by the same legacy’s price till the end of the subscription. All what we had as a reference at then, the below link that says the following:
Partners can change terms and billing frequencies when migrating.
Migrate with the same term length and end date from legacy.
An annual legacy subscription migrated at month seven have five remaining months of the new commerce term left.
Which means that we should continue to pay for the remaining months left with the same rate of the legacy.
Recently , the Microsoft’s tech team referred to a document New Commerce Experience Handbook that doesn’t inspire from its name and description that it should be considered as a reference before proceeding to migrate the legacy subscription into the new commerce experience. And based on its change log, it had many modifications and still has ones, and it is not clear to us its issue date. On top of that, section Understanding prorated refunds, has been added on May 6 2022 , after we did the migration process which the part of the billing and refund was confusable and not clear.
Migrate subscriptions to new commerce - Partner Center
So to summarize the case, this Order was placed in December 2021 as one year annual commitment. At the time, we got charged for the whole order value which was fully paid upfront afterwards.
By end of April, we did the migration from Legacy to NCE with same subscription terms and conditions and while we got the prorated refund based on Legacy old prices prevailing at the time order was submitted, the remaining duration of the subscription was charged at the new higher prices of NCE. Resulting in a difference of USD 35 K.
All what we are requesting here is that as a partner we expect Microsoft to understand the situation well and support us to skip this unexpected situation.
we have ongoing support cases regarding this issue, but we have received a recommendation from the engineering team to post here on this channel as well to reach out for another channel of support.
5 Replies
AsherNiermanMicrosoft
Maiada,
I'm Asher from the Microsoft Advanced Support for Partners team. I would like to try to assist and will send you a DM to learn more about the situation and active support cases.
Regarding the Legacy vs NCE billing differences, there were many announcements, webinars, and partner newsletter articles about this subject and separately regarding price changes. Some of these were in the public sites like the one you referenced, while others were in Partner Center, Partner.Microsoft.com, and detailed at events like Inspire. Regarding the price changes, I believe the price changes were announced mid 2021 but didn't take effect until March 1, 2022, 9 months or so later. There was also a period of time (3-6 months I believe), that the NCE monthly prices were the exact same monthly cost as the annual NCEs with monthly billing, instead of the monthly NCEs costing ~20% more, aiming to ease Partners and Customers into the transition.
I know this information can't change the situation you're in now but again I am happy to try to assist. Additionally, if you'd like, I can share a few links that would be good to review and bookmark to maintain a pulse on the Partner space and areas of importance based on your specific Partner needs.
Sending you a DM now.
Thanks,
Asher
aka.ms/asfp- Hi Asher & Jill, thank you so much for your assistance, I've shared all the needed information in DM.
Counting on your support, this is much appreciated.
What made you feel compelled to migrate the customer to NCE? I knew of companies that purchased 1Y legacy CSP subscriptions in the 4th quarter of 2021 so that they could essentially defer migrating to NCE for almost a year.
Doesn't the URL you linked below even talk about pricing? I know that there were almost a billion NCE communications from Microsoft and almost a dozen changes to timelines and procedures, but I have to feel like Microsoft covered almost all foreseeable scenarios pretty thoroughly during this (lengthy) process.
I know that, in the indirect channel, we covered all of this information ad nauseam with partners. This seems like you assumed pricing would remain the same even though favorable pricing is a huge reason why companies held on to traditional (legacy) CSP for so long. Luckily, these types of conversations won't be happening for much longer.
We completed the migration as per Microsoft's encouragement to move legacy clients to their new commerce experience. However we were not given any prior warning or consent that the pricing for the new experience would differ from the legacy price until the end of our subscription. This lack of information has put us in a challenging position.
As a partner we always encourage our customers to early adopt Microsoft latest solutions and technologies. We are counting on Microsoft's understanding and assistance in finding a solution together. Our partnership has always been valued and we trust that with cooperation we will be able to navigate through this situation.
- JillArmour
Community Manager
AsherNierman FYI
