Microsoft Service Level Agreements
Most of Microsoft’s online services come with a service level agreement. And almost all of them are at the 99.9% service availability level.
But something can always happen and the services are not available or only partially available. If the services are unavailable long enough, you as a customer are guaranteed a refund or credit.
There are various SLAs within Microsoft’s 365 system, be it Azure Active Directory, Exchange Online, Teams call quality, various Power Platforms and more.
In general, the credit is
- 25% for uptime less than 99.9%
- 50% for uptime less than 99%
- 100% for uptime less than 95%
However, you will never receive more than you pay Microsoft for the service. This is not an insurance policy. It is simply a refund for what you paid for. The calculations for this generally look like this.
Calculation of monthly uptime
The calculations for this are generally as follows:
((user minutes – downtime) / user minutes) * 100
During a service outage, you will find a reference to the affected services in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center under Health > Service Health > Incidents.
The important information you need here is the Incident ID. In the Service Health Center, you will find a list of ongoing incidents. But if you are looking for a credit, that incident is already history. Therefore, click on the History tab. Here you can search for the Incident ID, and you’ll find a list of updates to the incident, as well as a downloadable report of the entire incident.
Requesting a refund
- Microsoft 365 Admin Center
- Support menu
- New Service Request menu.
- In the window “How can we help you? Enter a text in the input field and let it search with the “Arrow” button.
- Contact Support” button
- In the “Contact Support” window fill in the necessary fields
- Contact me” button
Note that you have until the end of the next month to submit a request for reimbursement.