My colleague has a single quarterly licence which she pays £300 per quarter to use Microstation as part of her architectural design firm.
She has been charged an extra £1000 this quarter due to activating a second licence for ten minutes back in mid January.
This activation was due to the purchase of new hardware in the form of a desktop and laptop which she was installing the software on both. It woudl appear in doing so she inadvertently utilised a second licence.
She is not consistently using a second licence or has any other staff which do so. Her annual usage statistics would show that this is a one off and therefore potentially a mistake or error but the accounts conveniently ignore this and bill her anyway.
In speaking with her account manager she was fobbed off, told they couldn't help her and redirected to the Bentleky website. We will be pursuing this further with Bentley about this wholly appalling level of service.
She pays annually £1200 to use Microstation and is a sole practitioner. A Thousand pounds for Ten Minutes use is complete extortion and I fail to understand how it is justified. If she was consistently using a second licence then she would need to pay for it and usage stats would prove that - but this was clearly not the case.
Does anyone have any experience of this? What can be done?
Hello D Coulson,
User need to get in touch with their accoutn manager only regarding any over usage charges. Also she can refer the Daily Peak Application Usage report from reporting.bentley.com to find the application usage start and end time.
Regards,
Sheetal Bhegade
Account manager has offered little assistance so far.
We have seen usage report. Ten minutes used for two licences. When installing on a new laptop.
There is no easy way to restrict usage of licence to just the one as paid for. Bentley openly admit it's not how it's supposed to work.
It should inform users they are about to incur additional cost outside of their licence agreement. It doesn't, and you find out later via the invoice. £933 for ten minutes!
You can enable license alerting that can warn users before they exceed a defined number of licenses in use simultaneously.
https://communities.bentley.com/products/licensing/w/licensing__wiki/42192/how-to-enable-and-configure-license-alerting-for-products
Sheetal
I have 5 years of experience with this......as in 5 years of getting screwed by Bentley. They set up their licensing system to prey off of design firms. They do NOT care that they consistently overcharge you. That is what they want to do. They have absolutely no interest in listening to their customers, or heaven forbid, actually make licensing easier and less expensive for them. I have tried to communicate with numerous Bentley employees on different levels about this and the response I get is nothing. Their status quo is to ignore anyone who tries to address this issue in a meaningful manner. Sorry, I know this doesn't help you, but it is just the truth. Bentley has no interest in helping with your situation.
The ten minute additional licence charge has occurred twice. the cost is completely unrealistic, exorbitant and unfair. Theres no warning no message to advise you are about to incur such huge cost. For individuals who pay for one licence why would it be acceptable to enable them to use more than they pay for?