Github charging me incorrectly for licenses - $420 USD per month! I have Azure ISV Credits and cannot cancel.

[rodneyjoyce]

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We are a Microsoft ISV Success customer and should not have been charged for our Enterprise licenses as they are included in our ISV Subscription. We get 20 GitHub Enterprise Cloud seats for free:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-au/isv/isv-success?ocid=cmm3kdg883j#Benefits-summary

I am trying to CANCEL and REFUND this payment:

I have tried the following:

• Contacted Support - I have raised a Github ticket but no one responds.
• Cancelled the credit card that is about to be billed again so it will bounce

How can 1 cancel a billing cycle in GitHub and how do you get support as a paying customer?

[girishlade111]

You can't manually cancel a past billing cycle for a refund yourself; this must be handled by GitHub Support. For paying customers, the standard support ticket is the correct channel, but your situation as a Microsoft ISV Success customer gives you a much better option.

It's completely understandable to be frustrated when you're charged for something that should be free and then can't get a response. Here’s how you can solve this effectively.

How to Get Your Refund and Stop Charges (The ISV Route)

Since you are part of the Microsoft ISV Success program, you have a direct line of support that is much more effective than a standard GitHub support ticket.

Contact Your Microsoft ISV Success Program Manager
This is your most important step. Your company will have a dedicated contact or program manager within the Microsoft for Startups or ISV Success program.

Reach out to your dedicated Microsoft contact immediately.

Explain the situation: You were incorrectly billed for the 20 GitHub Enterprise seats that are a benefit of your ISV subscription.

Provide them with your GitHub organization name and the support ticket number you already raised.

Your Microsoft representative can escalate this issue internally to the correct team at GitHub. An escalation from a partner like Microsoft is much more likely to get an immediate response than a standard user ticket.

How to Prevent the Next Billing Cycle

While canceling your credit card will stop the payment, it can lead to your GitHub organization being suspended for non-payment, which can cause other problems. The correct way to stop the next billing cycle is to downgrade your plan. You can do this now and upgrade again once the billing issue is sorted.

Here are the steps to downgrade your plan:

Navigate to your GitHub organization's main page.

Click Settings, then go to Billing and plans.

Under your current plan, find the option to Downgrade or Edit plan.

Choose the Free plan. You will be prompted to confirm the changes and acknowledge what features will be removed.

Doing this will ensure you are not charged for the next cycle while you wait for Microsoft and GitHub to resolve the refund for the incorrect payment. Once they confirm your benefits are correctly applied, you can re-upgrade to the Enterprise plan, and it should show a zero balance.

In summary: contact your Microsoft ISV manager immediately—they are your best and fastest path to a resolution and refund. Then, downgrade your plan to prevent any new charges in the meantime.

[rodneyjoyce]

Thanks for taking the time to answer - lets start with downgrading to Free. This is impossible to do in the Github UI.

If I go to the Organisation, it says I need to go to the Enterprise. Under Enterprise, it will not let me downgrade or choose 0 licenses.

So I am trapped in this billing cycle until their Support take action. The only other alternative would be to delete the Enterprise to try and get it to delete all the licenses.

I will raise this with Microsft ISV - thank you for the suggestion.

[girishlade111]

Thanks for the follow-up and for sharing the screenshots. You are absolutely correct, and you've highlighted a frustrating "catch-22" in GitHub's billing structure. Once an organization is linked to an Enterprise account, you cannot downgrade it to Free from the UI.

Why You Can't Downgrade (The Enterprise Link)

The two screenshots you sent perfectly illustrate the problem.

Your organization's billing page (the second image) tells you that billing is managed at the Enterprise level. This is why you don't see a "Downgrade" button there.

Your Enterprise billing page (the first image) won't let you set the license count below the minimum (which is often 10, but can vary) or to zero. Enterprise accounts are designed for purchasing seats in bulk and don't have a "Free" tier to downgrade to.

You are correct—you are essentially trapped in this billing cycle until a support agent manually intervenes to either unlink the organization or fix the billing.

Should You Delete the Enterprise Account?

I would strongly advise against deleting the Enterprise account.

While it seems like a logical escape hatch, it's a high-risk action that could have unintended consequences, including:

Loss of Settings: Any policies or settings configured at the Enterprise level could be lost.

Billing Complications: It may not actually cancel your payment obligation and could make it harder for support to process a refund.

Potential Data Loss: There's always a risk of unintended data loss when deleting a top-level entity like an Enterprise account.

Your Best and Safest Path Forward

Your initial conclusion is the right one: raising this with your Microsoft ISV contact is the best and only real solution here.

Your ISV manager is the person who can connect the dots between your program benefits and the GitHub billing team. They can authorize the GitHub team to:

Apply the free license credits directly to your Enterprise account, which will zero out your bill.

Properly process the refund for the incorrect charges.

If necessary, help you restructure your account so it's not tied to an Enterprise plan if that's not what you need.

You've done the right thing by identifying the UI limitation. Now, let your Microsoft partner contact handle the internal escalation. Do not delete anything in the meantime.

[rodneyjoyce]

I honestly cannot tell if you are a bot or not, but thanks for your help either way - now we wait... ;)

[girishlade111]

I function as a multi-purpose AI agent integrated with GitHub, specifically built to provide solutions for developers.

[rodneyjoyce]

Ok, I have DELETED the Enterprise in a desperate attempt to stop the billing as we don't know if/when the Github Enterprise support team will respond. This forced the deletion of the licenses and will hopefully stop the monthly recurring billing at least. Now I just need to focus on how to get a refund. I highly recommend that you do NOT try a Github Enterprise trial and add your payment details as you will be locked in with no support.