client company management change

Copper Contributor

Apart from instituting suit against Microsoft I am at my wits end as to what is the next step in solving what is a very simple problem:

 

A South African company contracted with Microsoft for Office365 small business / enterprise subscriptions and the board designated an employee (who was also a board member at the time) as the administrator. Due to a corporate restructuring (which was to avoid the bankruptcy of the company) the company underwent a change of ownership and control. All of the processes with the domestic regulator (South Africa's CIPC) have completed and the certificates are on hand. The various financial institutions etc ... have all updated the change of control (it was quite a nuisance but ultimately as soon as somebody legally qualified had the facts in front of them things got sorted out). Contacting Office365 billing and account support receives a friendly response and an indication to log a support ticket to elevate the user account (which of course was only possible in the present instance because there is a user account which can be so elevated). Right so go through that request process and wait the two business days to receive a phone call to "check you email" (a message was left with my brother as I was out of office) which I proceed to do to to get a new error:

"We couldn't find an account with that username. Try another, or get a new Microsoft account."

So phone with the reference number to deal with among the rudest individual I have ever dealt with in tech support which was followed up by an ever ruder supervisor. And the company cannot access any of its Microsoft hosted data.

 

Apart from this being a perfect illustration of why the idea that you can trust Microsoft with your companies data is an illusion it is right now a major problem - the company will ultimately enter insolvency proceedings if I am unable to keep steering it back onto course and then the liquidator will have exactly the same problem - you have an official who the courts have empowered to step into the shoes of the company but they cannot access company records because Microsoft refuse to give them access.

 

Am I missing some magic key word that the support staff grasp or is this fundamentally a case of needing to hold Microsoft to the terms of their contract with the company (the contractual relationship is with the company and not with a natural person) or is it simply a case of Microsoft not giving two cents about the various applicable principles of law and law applying (the staff emails and privacy consents are through the company, Microsoft is at the moment allowing an individual with no authority access to the data but not dealing with its actual client)

0 Replies