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License renewal and a leap year

Jon Beets

I have just renewed my subscription for 12 months. The old subscription expired on the 20th January 2020 (or was valid up and until midnight on the 20/1/2020). When I activated the renewal, it was only valid until the 19th January 2021, i.e 21/1/2020 to 19/1/2021. This is a day short, according to my calculations; it should be 21/1/2020 to 20/1/2021. I suspect that because 2020 is a leap year, adding 365 days, rather than 366, is the cause. I have logged a case with Sophos support and I will report back here with the outcome. Meantime, if you are renewing in 2020, before the 29th February, for 12 months you may want to check the expiry date.



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  • 0

    Hi  

    It would be great if you could PM us the service request number to check the details further.

    Regards,

    Keyur
    Community Support Engineer | Sophos Support
    Sophos Support Videos | Knowledge Base  |  @SophosSupport | Sign up for SMS Alerts |
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  • 0

    Well, the latest response to the case is that the device subtracted a day because I activated the subscription a day late! I am gobsmacked by this response! Maybe it is a coincidence but I think the leap year has to be involved .. if it walks like a duck etc.

    Has anyone else renewed for 12 months since the being of 2020? I would be interested to see if it is just me!

    Jon

  • 0

    The licensing team have advised that the expiry for my subscription is now the 21/1/2021, so my problem is solved. There was no explanation. It pays to check, and always pays to ask!

  • 0 in reply to Jon Beets

    Hi Jon,

    For the sake of others who may read this thread, I can confirm that your case had nothing to do with a leap year and was due to the backdating we calculate if there is a gap between the expiry of a subscription and the start of a new subscription containing Enhanced Support. I have double-checked the date/time stamps on all Assets and transactions in your case and believe the originally calculation of 1-day back dated was correct. This is explained here: https://community.sophos.com/kb/en-us/125611#Why%20didn't%20I%20get%20the%20full%20term%20when%20I%20activated%20my%20license%20key?

    However, a member of our licensing team was clearly feeling generous and added the extra day back on for you!

    Regards

    Paul

  • 0 in reply to PaulWarren

    Paul,

    Thanks for the explanation. However it still does not make sense to me; essentially you are saying that Sophos would have penalized me 1 day, because I activated the subscription renewal on the 22/1/2020.

    Given the old subscription expired at midnight on the 20/1/2020, why did the renewed subscription, which on the invoice was from the 21/1/2020 - 20/1/2021, need to be docked a day? I did not expect it to be from the 22/1/2020 to 21/1/2021, only to honor the invoice, and what I paid for. The licensing tab on the device showed the subscription had expired, and the services provided were not available, so the firewall was running in basic protection mode, presumably from the 21st.

    You should also check why your reseller and your licensing team took 5 business days to create a new key.

    Jon

  • 0 in reply to Jon Beets

    Hi Jon,

    The backdating amount was calculated as a fraction of 1 day but rounded to 1 day. I agree that is a little over-zealous and I will get that calculation in the system reviewed.

    The invoice you refer to must have been one for your purchase from the Reseller, Sophos has no control over those invoices. However, you should have received a copy of the License Schedule. In some regions Sophos sends this directly to the Customer and in other regions it is sent to the Distributor and/or Reseller. In any event it is intended that the License Schedule should always ultimately be received by the Customer as, for example, it contains the license key and the instructions on how to activate it - invoices from Sophos don't include license keys.

    On the License Schedule it does show a Start / Expiry Date in the 'Schedule of products and services' section but includes a note below stating 'If a License Key has been provided, the Start and Expiry dates are dependent on the date that it is activated'. 

    Finally, on your point about the previous license being expired and the services not being available. That is what the display of the license in Web Admin / MySophos will show, but in actual fact, there is always a short grace period and your features would have remained active for the 1-2 day gap. Sophos accepts that there can sometimes be a combination of circumstances that might lead to an unintentional late renewal.

    If you have any further queries please do feel free to PM me and I will happily discuss further.

    Regards

    Paul

  • 0 in reply to PaulWarren

    Paul,

    Thanks again for responding. I think the whole backdating thing should be reviewed, not just the calculation. Given that I had paid for the subscription; the money was taken from my account on the 14th, I believe there could be legal implications from such a penalty. I will be checking the terms and conditions to see where this penalty is described.

    In my case the problem has been resolved, as you put it, by the generosity of the licensing team.

    Jon

  • 0

    I am going to reject Paul's answer which has been set as the verified answer as detailed below.

    - the FAQ example at Why didn't I get the full term when I activated my license key? illustrates the point I have been trying to make all along. The example in words (the diagram is a bit confusing) is that a renewed subscription activated 2 months after the old one expired, is modified (back dated) by subtracting 2 months so the expiry date is the same as if the renewal occurred when the old subscription expired. This is not 10 months from the old expiry date as seems to be the response from Sophos, but 10 months from when the new subscription was activated. This is what I would expect any organisation offering subscriptions to do, or everybody would take advantage.

    - in my case I activated the renewal on the 22/1/2020. Without back dating the expiry would have been 21/1/2021. Back dating, if my math is correct, should have subtracted a day, making the expiry the 20/1/2021. Instead it was set to the 19/1/2021, a subtraction of 2 days.

    So I still believe there is a bug somewhere where the calculation for working out the subtraction is a day out. And we are in a leap year!

    And the generosity of the licensing team, is actually a work around for a bug.

    I have had a browse through the legal stuff at https://www.sophos.com/en-us/legal and could find no reference to the back tracking for subscription renewal. I would expect it to be there somewhere, or Sophos might have a legal problem if it was challenged.

    Jon

  • +1 in reply to Jon Beets

    Hi Jon,

    Thanks for your reply and the effort you have put in to research and analyse this. The issue of rounding a fraction of a day up or down is one issue, but I also see your point that that only explains one 'lost' day and not the other one. I agree with your analysis and have updated our internal bug report with the points you have put forward.

    Regards,

    Paul

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