Event details
 Join us every month with your questions about Windows 365 features, deployment, customization, and best practices. During these one-hour Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA) events, we'll have members of the...
Heather_Poulsen
Updated Dec 27, 2024
andreipop940
Jun 22, 2022Copper Contributor
Background: I am a Windows 365 Business user. A month ago I bought a new licence for a more powerful machine. For some reason, auto renew wasn't set up for the payments. The licence expired on Sunday (day off). I reactivated it 27 hours later. All my data was deleted, everything, a month's worth of work lost. I contacted support, they told me your policy is that if a payment fails and a licence expires, all data will be erased in 24 hours and this CANNOT be undone. This is entirely different to your Microsoft 365 data retention policy and your Windows 365 FAQ says the policy is the same. 
Question: Do you think this data retention policy is fair? Do you think any serious business could trust you to provide their cloud PCs when you will destroy their work within 24 hours over simple payment issues?
- Daniel HarrisJun 22, 2022Brass ContributorThanks for the heads up. I recently bought a new business licence also and my renewal is also disabled. I would have expected data retention to be better than 24 hours. An expired card could be disastrous
- andreipop940Jun 22, 2022Copper ContributorIt has been disastrous for us. I have lost a month of server programming, this is going to set back my entire company and app release by weeks. Yes, I should have been backing up, but I was working solo in a cloud machine that IS backed up, so felt at no risk. I am devastated. and quite frankly, sickened. It's stated that the data retention policy is the same as Microsoft 365, which states that even an expedited delete request takes 3 days, active takes ~ 30, passive ~ 180, but my licence didn't auto renew (even though the card was on file) and they wiped the entire machine with no ability to recover, in just 27 hours? Even a trial account that expires has a 30 day grace period. None of this makes sense. Unfortunately, this question isn't a sexy question, so I don't expect it to be spoke about today.
- andreipop940Jun 22, 2022Copper ContributorSo according to the answer during the AMA, the experts all agree that the data should remain for at least 3 days if I choose to delete it, and longer if there is a commerce error, yet the phone support team are insisting that all data is deleted within 24 hours with no ability to restore. This is a major issue