Telstra issue delays BPOS reseller commissions

A number of Microsoft Business Productivity Suite (BPOS) resellers have not received their sales commissions from Telstra since November last year, a group of resellers has revealed on a newly formed forum on Linkedin.

Resellers first noticed a delay in payments when the commissions for October arrived a month late, in December instead of November.  

Payments are now three months behind, Paradyne's Loryan Strant said on the Microsoft Cloud Solutions in Australia Linkedin group.

He  told CRN that he received October’s payment in December and then November’s payment in February. Telstra then paid the same figure for the November commissions again in March. As of time of writing, Strant hadn't been paid commissions for December, January or February. 

"Telstra haven’t given me any information about how to deal with my payment summary. I have also spoken to Microsoft about it and they’re chasing it up on their end. 

“We got an email in mid-Feb acknowledging there was an issue. We didn’t get told, it would be nice to get an update," he said. 

Partner of Record for Microsoft Services, as it's known to resellers, is the monthly commission payment resellers receive for selling the BPOS tools to customers.

Instead of receiving a payment from the customer, resellers are paid by Telstra, which has a partnership with Microsoft Australia to resell the service through its T-Suite cloud platform.

A Telstra spokesperson told CRN in an email: "An issue occurred in October and affected commission payments to some partners for what appears to be a short time.  

“I have the exact same issue as Loryan but we formed the Linkedin forum to give a voice to the partner community so we can get together and communicate.

"Since we formed the Linkedin group late Friday, Microsoft has really tried to fix it.” Beaugeard encouraged other Microsoft resellers to join the group.

At least one other reseller, David Langeder, principal consultant at xactr, flagged the issue on the Linkedin forum.

Microsoft Australia said in email to CRN: ‘We deeply value our Microsoft partners and alongside Telstra, we are investigating the issue behind the delayed payments.

"We encourage all affected partners, to contact either your T-Suite Channel Sales Specialist (TCSS) or log a support request at Telstra Business Support so that the payment delays can be rectified as a matter of urgency.’

Oscar Trimboli, Microsoft’s director of Information Worker Business Group Australia, said on the forum yesterday that Microsoft was “working on it today”.

It remained unclear what caused the issue and how long it would take for payments to return to normal. 

BPOS is available for purchase from Telstra T-Suite and Microsoft. Microsoft recently announced that Office 365, the company’s next generation cloud productivity suite, will be available later this year.