Hi everyone,
I'm reaching out because I've found myself in a tricky situation with my Microsoft 365 licenses. For a long time, I've been purchasing them through TDSynnex, but recently I received an email from Microsoft saying we aren't meeting the minimum billing requirements to maintain our CSP status.
To clarify, we never intended to be on this channel; we just preferred buying from TDSynnex to manage our invoices in one place. Office licenses don't differ much in price, so it's been convenient.
Upon contacting TDSynnex, they advised me to uncheck the auto-renew option for our licenses and suggested purchasing licenses directly from the marketplace. I followed through – I removed the auto-renew and bought a license for Office 365 Business Standard from TDSynnex. After activation, I saw it listed in my admin portal, but when I tried to assign it to my user, TDSynnex said I needed to buy directly from Microsoft.
So, I called Microsoft, and a salesperson assisted me in purchasing a license directly for my user. I now have three licenses available but can only assign one.
In about 30 days, we will lose our CSP status, and my main concern is the potential loss of access to our emails, Teams, and other linked functionalities. Has anyone faced a similar situation? If so, how did you ensure a smooth transition without losing your data? Any experiences or advice would be greatly appreciated!
5 Answers
I'm a bit confused here. Were you buying licenses as a reseller for your own organization? You’re lucky Microsoft didn’t shut things down outright. You should connect with a different reseller or buy directly from Microsoft to get the right licensing for your needs. Losing CSP status shouldn’t impact your access; it just means you can no longer resell to your customers.
Be aware, you need to upgrade from Microsoft 265 to Microsoft 365 for seamless functionality after the transition.
You just need to ensure that the number and type of Microsoft licenses you purchase directly match what you had before the CSP expires. It’s straightforward, so don’t worry too much.
I’ve navigated the CSP switch before. As long as you’ve got enough licenses in your pool, you shouldn’t run into issues. It doesn’t track which vendor those licenses come from, so just ensure you’ve purchased sufficient licenses directly from Microsoft to cover your users. As long as that’s sorted, you should be fine!
Thanks for the reassurance! Just to clarify, we're actually transitioning out of being a CSP, so it’s comforting to know we can just buy directly and still keep our access.
You should have a grace period when your licenses expire, usually around 30 days. However, that policy might change soon, so keep an eye on updates from Microsoft.
That’s outdated info now; that grace period has been discontinued. So definitely double-check the most recent Microsoft policies.
That’s correct! After licenses expire, your tenant could go into a dormant state, where admin access is still available, but normal users won't be able to log in.
Exactly, we just bought through TDSynnex for convenience, but we're definitely not reselling. They didn’t explain the transition well at all. We did try to buy directly but ran into issues assigning the licenses.