Open Access? When?

Hello fellow consumer,

Since I am being ignored in the all new buggy customer support portal, I would like to ask if there's anyone else out there that have had this similar issue with with "Open Access"

A little background, we're a small civil & structural engineering firm that designs and permits plat/site/construction plan for residential subdivisions and commercial sites. I work on the Civil side, I dont know much about what they really do in the Structural side. ANYWAY, half of us mainly focus on plan production. The rest are admin and the bosses (engineers) that reviews our plan. From time to time, we're ask to prove our watermain sizing will be sufficient. So, we would take our plan, and run it in WaterCAD with a super simplified model. Our biggest project was 40±ac subdivision with about 15 FHA. This model had less than 100 pipes. Simplified being not including GV, bends, etc, services. Sometimes we'd just manually change the "length" of the pipe when our model is super conceptual. We have a yearly subscription for 250 pipes, which has been more than enough for our use. Since 2019, we're really only used this program on maybe around 15 projects.

A couple weeks back, our bookkeeper received an invoice from Bentley for a license(unlimited pipes) that we had apparently used that was not included in our subscription (250pipes). After a few back and forth on the phone with Bentley, I realized that I had accidentally "checked out" the wrong license. Which I was supposed to "check in" after I was done. Now, after I used it for a day 3± months back, I am now getting billed for 2 quarters (havent recieved yet Q2, but I get the feeling they wont be sympathetic). And it used to work fine. I contacted Customer Support regarding my WaterCAD not working, because I apparently had no access to the program. But after a few minutes, on my own (or so I thought) I figured out how to make it work which was "check out" a license. Being new to this "check-out-a-license system" I had no idea I had to "check in" the license after use.

I was told by CS that "you shouldnt have to check in". Yes, I know, that's how I used to do it. But it wasnt working. Only way I got it to work was "check out" a license. What's really upsetting is we're allowed to "check out" any license we didnt have (subscription). Posted below is our original reinstatement which didnt include "Open Access". For some reason we were included "Open Access" later on. As mentioned above, we rarely use this program. Maybe 40hours or less per year (approx 3~5 projects). We know exactly what we needed. Thus the "subscription". For whatever reason, "Open Access" was included after we had initially reinstated our subscription license.

First program that seems to employ a use-first-pay-later program. All other software company (Microsoft, Autodesk, Google, etc), if you dont have the right credentials to an account, or your account doesnt include access to a program, you simply wont be able to use the program.

This does seem to be a rant at this point. But I'm hoping I'm not alone on this, and someone will fix this.

Thank you all!

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