Forum Discussion
EM+S E3 50 Seat Legacy donation - some customers being charged - why?
Hi,
Bit of a niche question and probably only relates to non-profit customers who subscribed to this prior to September 2019.
I know that back in September 2019 it was announced that the non-profit donation of 50-seat Microsoft 365 Enterprise Mobility + Security E3 was being discontinued for new customers, but Microsoft said then that customers who had already procured these donated subscriptions could keep them in perpetuity as a legacy donation. A couple of our clients have received renewal invoices for this product but with the non-profit staff pricing rather than the donation pricing.
Of customers who have had a renewal recently, only 2 have been charged with others still receiving the donation. These are all Direct Bill customers.
I know that the Office365 E2 Grant is being discontinued from October renewals but have not seen anything similar for the EM+S E3 donation. Have I missed something? Has anyone else experienced similar?
I have reached out with a service request but the suggested explanation was way off the mark, saying that it was due to changing from monthly to annual billing, which wasn't the case, as shown by the previous year's zero annual invoice.
Appreciate your input.
Thanks,
Colin
- We are currently in a similar situation, asking Microsoft to refund us for a full year of monthly charges. We did not received any emails regarding this change and could not find the notice either. Microsoft offered to refund 50% but we are holding to our initial request since they admit their communication problem regarding this change.
So I was wondering how many of you got a full refund? Any advice? Thank you!Ugo1138 We have received refunds for the invoices but we cancelled the subscriptions shortly after the invoice was issued, and these are usually annual not monthly billing. We removed the subscription from all clients after the first couple of issues as didn't want any further stress.
We have one ex-client who has asked for help as they have been hit with a few month's invoices, so will have to see how that goes.
Hope yours get sorted.
- Our non-profit organization is also impacted by this issue. Got billed for €1.815 for an annual renewal of 50 licenses. No announcements, nothing in the message center, no notifications (at least not recent) about this change. Last year when Office E2 was going to be deprecated there was lots of communications about that change. For EMS E3, nothing. We immediately cancelled the EMS E3 subscription, raised a support case and requested the invoice to be made undone, but so far no solution has been offered.
We've just had our first customer hit with this. As Daniel noted, for the E2 deprecation they warned clearly and often, but not for this EMS-E3 one!! They really dropped the ball.
Thanks for the hint to go back to 2021 for MC289247, Colin. Luckily we haven't deleted the emails, since it's not accessible now in admin center as far as I can see!
It is clear they made a mistake! It says very clearly there will be more communication and "option" (my emphasis below). (screenshot below)
- "As we approach the retirement date, we will provide additional information/reminders via forthcoming Message Center communications."
- "will be provided the option to move your users to our discounted EMS E3 nonprofit offer"
Alan
I completely agree with your sentiment Alanjmcf.
It's the inconsistency I especially find an issue, as we still have some customers who are renewing at zero cost while others are being charged the discounted rate.
The only thing I can say, from our experience, is that if you cancel the renewed subscription swiftly, the credit will be issued for the full invoice value.
For us, it was a historic subscription as the majority of our customers have moved to the M365 BP licence. For those that hadn't moved and were using the EMS for Intune & OME, they will move to M365 BP.
Not the best Customer or Partner experience, and a bit disappointing that there has been no follow-up from MSFT TSI, as this has obviously been a widespread issue.Colin
I’ve had three customers affected. At the latter two support cases they would not commit to a full refund. They’ve clearly have been given a script to say “Your were told about change to this license type. Part month refund will be given. No full refund is available.”
I pushed back strongly, quoting the two statements in their (single) announcement I highlighted above. Let’s see!
- Our volunteer rescue squad just got hit with a similar invoice on these licenses that were never assigned to a user. I just spent half an hour on the phone with a rep that said we had to pay the invoice because we were notified of the change. I can't find anything via email indicating this billing change. And it remains a "kick in the teeth" the license name still says "50 seat donation". We JUST switched over to O365 from Google in the past month. Supposedly I am getting a call back from a manager.
OPVRS_IT I finally spoke with an Office 365 Non-Profit Ambassador who said they would cancel the invoice on the next billing cycle. Billing is done on the 20th. I continue to receive threatening emails indicating the tenant will be shut down on the 18th. I submitted a second ticket and failed to get an in-writing statement that our tenant would not be shut down.
If this happens over the weekend, we plan to fall back to Google & Slack. Given how Microsoft handled this, I'm not sure we would go back.
- We've just had a bill. We hadn't even reduced our license usage since it was free, but due to staff changes generally, there were a bunch of these licences not even allocated, so we'll be paying for nothing at all. The subscription is still called '50 seat donation' as well.
Thanks for replying DevLunsford.
I have an update, after raising it through Microsoft Non-profit support. The EM+S E3 donation retirement was notified in the Admin Message Centre on 11th October 2021, under MC289247 and with the title "We’re retiring the legacy Microsoft Enterprise Mobility + Security E3 grant". That is the only notification that I could find and basically it says that it will be retired from 4th April 2022.
In case you can't find it, here is the text of the message:
Because most of the nonprofits we currently support are small, beginning April 4, 2022, we’re retiring the legacy Microsoft Enterprise Mobility + Security E3 (EMS E3) grant, which was built primarily to secure large organizations.
Recommended actions
At your next renewal date:- Move your users to the discounted EMS E3 nonprofit offer (75 percent off commercial pricing).
- Manually move up to 10 users to the Microsoft 365 Business Premium grant, which includes both world-class security and the innovative Office apps and intelligent cloud services.
I can only think that when I had seen this notification, I had wrongly assumed that in-action would have resulted in automatic cancelling of the granted subscription at first renewal after April 2022, not automatic switch to the discounted EM+S E3 offer.
As our subscriptions for the granted products are paid via invoice, when we cancelled the subscription, Microsoft issued a credit note for the full invoiced amount which was applied against the invoice, and so zeroed out.
From what I can see from our clients, the charge is occurring on renewal date and for us has been applied to clients with renewals from 1st July 2023.
Hope this helps others and a word of caution to ensure you migrate off the legacy E2 granted licences.
Thank youSPH_Colin and @Dev Lunsford
We were hit with the $1760.94 bill on our September billing. I've been going back and forth with Microsoft Support and he just kept on telling me that we were notified via email. I told him I've checked my email and looked through the Office 365 Message Center and I did not find anything. I did not think about looking back to October 2021.
Microsoft did a great job in notifying everyone of the final cancellation of E2 licenses and reduction of the Azure Grants but one notice 2 years ago and suddenly charging us $1760.94 is not good. I'm cancelling and getting a refund to repurchase the EMS3 at a monthly rate which easier for my non-profit.
