Microsoft 365 outage: your business may be owed a credit, but you have to ask
Business plans hit by this week’s Microsoft 365 outage may qualify for a service credit under Microsoft’s SLA. It isn’t automatic, and claims close 31 December.
If your business lost email or Teams in this week’s Microsoft 365 outage, Microsoft may owe you part of this month’s fee back. But it won’t arrive on its own. Someone has to claim it, with evidence, by 31 December.
Microsoft’s status page puts the outage at 6:05pm Thursday to 12:10am Saturday, Perth time. We covered the clean-up in Microsoft 365 outage is over, and the email backlog is cleared. This is about the money.
What Microsoft promises
Microsoft’s business services are covered by its Service Level Agreement for Online Services. For Exchange Online, Teams, SharePoint and OneDrive for work or school, it promises 99.9% uptime each calendar month.
When a service falls short, you get a credit off that service’s fee:
| Monthly uptime | Credit |
|---|---|
| Below 99.9% | 25% |
| Below 99% | 50% |
| Below 95% | 100% |
Exchange Online counts as down when users can’t send or receive email with Outlook on the web. Teams counts as down when people can’t chat or start an online meeting.
Roughly how much
Downtime is measured per user, not for your business as a whole. Microsoft multiplies each incident’s minutes by the number of users affected. So if only some of your staff were cut off, your figure is smaller.
November has 43,200 minutes. If every user lost email for the whole 30 hours on Microsoft’s status page, uptime would be about 95.8%, on our reading. That’s the 50% tier.
Two catches. The credit applies to the service that failed, not your whole plan. Microsoft’s guidance for resellers gives the example of a suite customer who only lost SharePoint: the credit is for SharePoint alone, prorated.
And those times come from Microsoft’s consumer status page. Your business’s own incidents are listed, with their IDs, on the Service health page of the Microsoft 365 admin centre, and may show different times. Wired lists three: EX1550543 for Exchange, MO1550821 for Outlook and TM1550488 for Teams.
Not automatic, and not cash
Wired, which filed its own claim, reports that credits aren’t automatic. Here’s what Microsoft’s terms say:
- Deadline. Microsoft must receive the claim by the end of the month after the incident. For this outage, that’s 31 December.
- Evidence. A claim needs a description of the incident and when and how long you were down. It also needs the affected resources, how many users were hit and where, and the errors they saw. Claims missing this are rejected.
- A credit, not a refund. It’s applied to your fees and shows on a later invoice, and can’t exceed that service’s monthly fee. Claims are typically processed within 45 days.
- That’s it. Credits are your “sole and exclusive remedy” under the agreement. They don’t cover lost revenue or running costs.
An outage notice is not confirmation that a credit is due.
Who claims, and where
If you pay Microsoft directly, an admin raises a support request in the Microsoft 365 admin centre: Help & support, then Contact support. Only admins of a business subscription can use it.
If you bought through a reseller (an IT provider or a Microsoft partner), ask them. They, or the distributor they buy from, lodge the claim with Microsoft through its Partner Center. The partner needs an email requesting the credit from an address on your business’s domain, not a personal one. Microsoft gives partners one month from the end of the billing month to lodge it, so don’t leave it until late December.
Microsoft 365 Personal and Family sit under Microsoft’s consumer agreement instead. It says Microsoft may give refunds or credits “at our sole discretion”.
Separately, Australian Consumer Law guarantees can cover a business buying services that cost under $100,000 including GST, the ACCC says. We found no guidance on how they apply to a cloud outage.
If the outage has you rethinking your plan, our Microsoft 365 business plans compared sets out what each one includes.
Checklist
- Find out how you bought Microsoft 365. Check whether your invoice comes from Microsoft or from a reseller, because that decides who lodges the claim.
- Note the incident IDs. In the admin centre’s Service health page, record the IDs for the Exchange, Outlook and Teams incidents that hit your business.
- Write down who was affected. List how many staff lost email or Teams, where they were, roughly when, and the errors they saw.
- Lodge a support request in the admin centre if you pay Microsoft directly. Choose Help & support, then Contact support, and include the incident IDs, user count and errors you listed.
- Email your reseller from your business address if you bought through one. Ask them to request the credit, and include your list of affected staff.
- Diary 31 December. Microsoft must receive a direct claim by then; resellers face a similar deadline, so ask them for theirs.
- Check a later invoice for the credit. It appears as money off a future bill, not a refund.
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