So, It appears to me that Bentley has changed it's licensing system from helpful to a scam.
About 3 months ago I was contacted by an "account representative" that told me that I had several occasions where I was over the number of licenses that I had purchased, which wasn't possible....since I am a 5 person firm with only THREE users, and have THREE licenses of Microstation, I was told by this "Account representative" that I needed to sign up for a different licensing agreement or I would be assigned the more expensive one without it being my choice. So I did...I agreed to "Select open access"...this was suppose to be the best solution to me according to this account rep.
This week I got a "WARNING" that I would be recieving a punitive invoice for OVER USE of my agreed license unless I purchased another copy of microstation, and was sent a spreadsheet that showed 4 days over the past 3 months that there were 4 uses of Microstation.....the impending invoice is $5000.
The best part is that the FORTH license is being reported from a computer that is only used by a remote person to remote desktop into to connect to our server, not a forth employee.
I have asked this "Account representative" to give me his supervisors information and so far he has refused.
Although Microstation uses machine based licensing and any user can work on local computer without needing additional license for each keep in mind that if using Windows Remote desktop it actually relays machine name to client computer so programs see it as that name and not local name. To prevent this and avoid issues in future you should log in selectserver.bentley.com and enable restrictions by machine name in "Client Access Restrictions" settings for only those machines which has Microstation installed.
This is true that for small firms in some fields with few licenses this licensing policy is not preferable. Ironically your case clearly shows that node-locked licenses would be enough for your everyday use. I suppose the 4 occasional uses did not increase profit to 5000$ for you and could easy work without it ;-) If this policy is not revised I see that there is a risk that Bentley will lose lot of SELECT customers which has small number of licenses. Of course for larger companies there are advantages using SELECT server and pooled licensing allows to use less licenses. Contact your account manager.
Oto....that's EXACTLY what the idiot Account rep should have called and talked to me about when I asked him a few months ago if this is an issue. He chose to send me a link that I could study on how Bentley reads the usages, AND last week sent a nasty email on how he sent me that link a few months ago.
Of course, this will all be my evidence if this ends up in court.
So, I thought I would add to this post, I just received another invoice for this rediculous licensing system they have incorporated, do give you all an idea of scale, the invoice this quarter was for about $1600. Keep in mind, I have 3 users and 3 licenses.....we don't ever OVER use the product, its ALWAYS a duplicate read within an hour, so.....I feel this is an un-lawful invoice, and has been turned over the NC Attorney Generals office. I will start there, and keep looking for more avenues to get this policy revised to be fair.
Can you please clarify what you mean by "duplicate read"? I believe I know what you are saying but I want to be sure.
Thanks
If one person using one seat of Microstation, then closes that seat, and within one hour gets on a different machine, which in my case would be one either from home or at the office, then that would be considered 2 uses, when it's only one person using it one at a time. this is happening to us for various reasons, one of which is my ability to work remotely, but this past occurance is due to me having to set up a new computer....still.....we have THREE users, and THREE Licenses....and in no cases are we using more than 3 at a time....these OVERUSES are not more than one at a time.
I understand your situation and can see how this would cause frustration but this is how license usage has been counted for some time. There are several articles on this Communities site that cover license usage. Here is a more recent one that covers the topic but there are others from previous years:
communities.bentley.com/.../understanding-monitoring-and-managing-usage.aspx