After a long silence, Microsoft has finally taken a stand on Free Storage Issue and Camera Roll feature. Existing users can keep the 15 GB free Storage Offer along with Camera Roll Bonus, but any new user will be limited to only 2 GB storage. The only catch is that existing users will have to opt-in to keep that storage by January 31, 2016.
In November, Microsoft took a U-Turn from its most advertised feature with Lumia Phones. The free storage on OneDrive was limited to 2 GB with no camera roll bonus. This was not only criticised, but Microsoft did feel the heat when UserVoice Thread received approximately 72,000 votes to bring the feature back.
Today, Group Program Manager, Microsoft, humbly responded back to the Uservoice thread with this great news. He apologised, and said :
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.
Follow the link to opt-in for 15 GB free storage offer along with Camera Roll bonus. Sign up to keep your free OneDrive storage amounts. The link takes you to a special page which is at preview.onedrive.com and looks like this:
It says :
Thank you for using Microsoft OneDrive. You’re an important part of what we do, and we want to make sure you know that. That’s why we’re making it possible for you to keep your base storage quota and camera roll bonus, even after the changes roll out. Click below and your account will not be affected when the amount of free storage changes from 15 GB to 5 GB and the +15 GB camera roll bonus is discontinued.
Once you login with your Microsoft Account which you intend to use in the phone, it will reserve your storage with message as “Success! Your account will not be affected by the upcoming storage changes.”
