Bashkir power engineers sued the Russian office of Microsoft, which left them without technical support

At the end of November, Bashkir Distribution Electric Networks (Bashkirenergo) won a lawsuit against Microsoft Rus on paid but not provided technical support. This follows from the motivational decision on this case, published in the file of arbitration courts at the end of November 2022^[1].

As the court established, on February 21, 2022, Bashkirenergo and Microsoft Rus entered into an agreement for the provision of Premier level support, according to which the latter was supposed to provide services from March 1, 2022 to February 28, 2023, providing acceptance certificates for each quarter.

The cost of the service amounted to about 4.7 million rubles. Bashkirenergo paid this amount. For the first quarter, Microsoft Rus provided an acceptance certificate, but for the second quarter it is no longer there. In addition, Bashkirenergo does not have the opportunity to obtain technical support, the company confirmed this in court with screenshots from the Microsoft service portal.

Bashkirenergo was left without Microsoft support services, which it paid in full "(photo - Paco Freire/Global Look Press)"

Bashkirenergo demanded to provide an act of acceptance for the 2nd quarter, as well as pay a penalty for non-fulfillment of obligations under the contract, but there was no response from Microsoft Rus, and the requirements were not fulfilled. After that, the company went to court with a demand to terminate the contract with the Russian office of Microsoft and force it to pay it funds paid for services that were not provided.

No one came to court from Microsoft Rus, follows from the published decision. The judge sided with the power engineers and decided that Microsoft Rus should pay them 4.3 million rubles, qualified as unjust enrichment, and terminate the contract.

Bashkirenergo also demanded payment of interest for the use of its funds, but the court decided that, since the contract was terminated in court, interest on the use of other people's funds accrued before the termination of the contract was unlawful.

In the file of arbitration cases to date in 2022, this is the only lawsuit against the Russian office of Microsoft, which, against the background of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, is reducing its business in Russia. Announcing in June a decision to curtail business in the country, global Microsoft said that the company would continue to fulfill its existing contractual obligations with Russian customers. Read more here.

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