No joke: Microsoft foolishly published inaccurate price list on April 1st

Fixed it the next day but a few lucky folk may have dodged a five percent Copilot price hike

Exclusive Microsoft published inaccurate price lists for some of its products on, of all days, April the 1st.

The software goliath admitted to its error in posts to the news feed it provides to its partner community.

“The April NCE license-based price list doesn't indicate the correct pricing for annual commitment monthly billing plans for Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales, and Microsoft 365 Copilot for Service,” states one of the posts. “These prices are correctly reflected in the March price list,” the post adds.

The price rises were known long before March, because Microsoft announced them in November 2024.

The planned changes weren’t great news for customers because they meant those who make monthly payments for annual subscriptions would be slugged an extra five percent. Microsoft prefers its customers to pay up front for the full year, which helps the Windows titan’s cashflow and lowers its transaction costs.

If you purchased the products mentioned above before Microsoft published a correct price list, the software giant will honor the price you paid. If you placed an order after the corrected lists were published, but used the inaccurate lists to formulate a quote, you’re out of luck.

At this point we should explain the reference to “NCE” above: It’s the New Commerce Experience, a channel program Microsoft bills as allowing partners to “unlock growth opportunities, drive more customer success, and lower complexity and costs—no matter how your customers buy.”

Perhaps Microsoft’s blurb should also mention that sometimes NCE means partners need to clean up messes that arguably shouldn’t happen. ®