Last month on November, 2, 2015, Microsoft made a surprising announcement regarding changes to it’s OneDrive storage plans, which resulted in a backlash from the OneDrive user community. Over 70,000 votes were generated in a form of a protest called “Give us back our storage” which was launched on the UserVoice site, forcing Microsoft to address this issue. And they did today.
The above feedback on UserVoice was closed by Douglas Pearce, Microsoft Group Program Manager, who also offered this statement:
In November we made a business decision to reduce storage limits for OneDrive. Since then, we’ve heard clearly from our Windows and OneDrive fans about the frustration and disappointment we have caused. We realize the announcement came across as blaming customers for using our product. For this, we are truly sorry and would like to apologize to the community.
While we are not changing our overall plans, we’d like to clarify what we are doing for customers impacted by the changes and share a new offer which we hope will go a long way in making the situation better for our biggest fans.
Office 365 Home, Personal, and University subscriptions will continue to include 1 TB of storage. Any subscriber who received additional storage as part of our unlimited offer will keep it for at least 12 months. For anyone unhappy with the decision to not offer unlimited storage, we will offer a full refund.
For customers of our free service who have over 5 GB of content and who are directly impacted by the storage change, we will offer one free year of Office 365 Personal, which includes 1 TB of storage. These customers will receive an email with redemption information early next year.
In addition, for our biggest fans who have been loyal advocates for OneDrive, we are adding a new offer that lets you keep your existing 15 GB of free storage when the changes happen next year. If you also have the 15 GB camera roll bonus, you’ll be able to keep that as well. From now until the end of January, you can sign up to keep your storage at the link below.
http://aka.ms/onedrivestorage
We are all genuinely sorry for the frustration this decision has caused and for the way it was communicated. Thank you for sticking with us.
Bottom line, if you want to keep your 15 GB free storage as well as the 15 GB bonus for using the Camera Roll feature, head over to https://preview.onedrive.com/bonus/ before the end of January 2016 to lock that in for each individual account you use.
Once you have done so, you’ll be glowing with success!
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