Customers buying software licenses from Microsoft always have the right to return, within a certain period of time. This return policy for perpetual licenses bought under the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program is changing per June 1st, 2021.
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A software license purchase can be a mistake, the wrong product or version or – looking backwards – not authorized. In such cases, a customer may return the licenses. This cancellations are bound to certain policies and for CSP, those policies are changing.
30 days return
Starting June 1st, 2021, the cancellation term is reduced from 60 to 30 days after date of purchase. At the same time, the refund policy is changing as well. Instead of a full refund for all products, after June 1st a customer will only get a full refund for perpetual licenses. For Server Subscriptions purchased under the CSP program the refund will be prorated between 2 and 30 days. This means that when a customer returns a Server Subscription for Azure at day 27 after the date of purchase, the refund will be less than when the customer returns this subscription at day 4.
A fact good to know: partial returns are not allowed. When a customer has bought 10 Office 2019 Professional Plus license through CSP and wants to return 4 of them, they first have to return the ‘full 10’ and afterwards repurchase 6 licenses.
Download link
At the same time Microsoft changes the return policy, they will also change the availability of download links. Download links are the links to the download files of the software purchased and the keys to activate the software. For perpetual licenses bought through the CSP program those download links are available to the Microsoft Partner (Partner Center) and the customer (Microsoft 365 Admin Center). For Microsoft Partners, the download links will expire (i.e. disappear) five days after the first download by the customer. The download links remain in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. Since the perpetual licenses are owned by the customer and provided by the partner, this is a logical step.
More to know
There is more to learn about perpetual software licenses and their availability in the Cloud Solution Provider Program. Do you want to know more about this topic? Then you might want to register for a training from our sister-company Didactive, or simply contact us for more information.