Unable to add Communication Credits to an existing customer client but also on a brand new tenant

[MindMeldMan]

Hi, 

I have clients that are migrating their telephony to Microsoft Teams.  They both have 1-800/1-888 numbers that needs to be ported.  However when I try to add communication credits directly from Microsoft from the tenants (to pay for calls outside of the calling plans and to pay for incoming calls on the 1-800/1-888 numbers) as I've done plenty of time, the option doesn't appear.

Client 1:

The clients has a partner relationship with a company that offers charging telco charges on Azure.  The client doesn't want to do business with that partner anymore but the relationship can't be broken as there are NCE M365 licences present from them on the tenant (not billed, not used as they were added by error by the partner).  We're told they can't be removed and that that might be the reason why we can't add Communication Credits.  We've opened a ticket with Microsoft for client 1 and 3 weeks down the line we have yet to talk/write to a human.  We're being given the runaroud.

Client 2 :

Brand new tenant set up by us.  We do not do telco charges on Azure but we still cannot see the possibility to add Communications credits directly from Microsoft ?!? No tickets open yet as since we can't even get help with client 1 we're waiting to see if other avenues will open.

Does anyone know how can we make/force this option to appear on a tenant? 

We were told to try adding trial Teams telephony licences directly from Microsoft and also trial M365 E3 trial licences from Microsoft to see if it woul make the opton to add communication credits appear with no success.

If we decide to do telco charge on Azure we were told that it would work with long distance charges but not with the 1-800/1-888 numbers.  Is that true or is that still true?

If it is, I don't understand why this is allowed to happen.  On one hand not allowing customers to buy/enable communication credits directly with Microsoft on their tenant and on the other hand not enabling 1-800/1-888 numbers telco charges on Azure.  This is basically a showstopper for any business that have toll free numbers to go on Teams Calling Plan telephony.

Thanks for you input!

[#2]

@MindMeldMan  Would like to hear what you find out. We have a similar problem as your Client1 where we can't buy Communication credits for the 800 number. We have tickets open with Microsoft as well. If we get anywhere I will let you know.

[#3]

Anyone get anywhere on this? Having the same issue. Waiting on MS phone number support team.

[#4]

@stanstanford  Microsoft has not resolved the issue for me at this point.  I was trying to get a E5 trial to enable the communication credits, which doesn't work in NCE. Microsoft asked me to cancel the trial so they could try to switch the tenant back to a legacy version of NCE. It didn't work.  Last thing they had me do was run PSR and grab a text file of code from my tenant web page. Told me to give them 3 -5 business days. 

I did come up with a workaround but only because my client purchased another company that was using Office 365 as well. The other company was still in legacy NCE so I was able to buy the communication credits. I had Microsoft port the 800 number over and then I setup a forward to send it to the local number assigned to the auto attendant of the tenant I'm having the problem with.  If I didn't have that other Office 365 tenant, I would be stuck. That being said, porting the 800 number to another service like RingCentral would let you forward the number into a local Teams number. But we shouldn't have to do that.