Expired Term for Educational License (ongoing issue)

[Anonymous]

Hello,

Autodesk has a tutorial on how to obtain an educational license. Already since August 2018 Fusion 360 started to act up and claimed that my license was invalid. I tried their support several times and they never fixed the issue. While their website confirms that I have obtained access to the product, Fusion 360 continues to claim that my registration is being processed.

It has been like this for months and several attempts to contact Autodesk Support to have this fixed resulted in no change at all.

I am under the impression that they had a software server issues earlier but that it should be sorted by now. Well, it does not seem like it. So my question:

Autodesk Support does not seem able to get their act together. Has anybody found a work around for this problem?

Thank you!

This step goes on FOREVER.I obtained access.The website registration is complete.Okay, lets get started.

[karina.harper]

Hi @Anonymous 

When I look at your account I don't see an education license.

I escalated this, but I see that there is already a case open about the same issue. It is waiting for a support agent to be assigned, and once there is you will hear from them. 

Cheers!

Karina

[Anonymous]

Thank you for your reply. Autodesk has promised to handle this several times and it never succeeded. When do you expect this to be fixed this time? I would like to be able to report back at that time.

[karina.harper]

Hi @Anonymous 

The accounts team is separate so I can't say, but the case is marked as critical. My advice would be to reply to every e-mail you get from them, ask for an update, and if you don't get a response you can private message me and I can contact them and see if I can get an update for you.

Also, there seems to be some issue associated with your e-mail and this account, so I would recommend trying a different e-mail (could be a new gmail account) and see if it works. That might get you going for now.

Cheers,

Karina

[Anonymous]

Dear Karina,

Thank you for your help. The email used is my official university account, which I assume you need to be able to verify that I am an actual member of that organization. Can you please send me a personal message or email with a description of what is wrong with my address? Of course I could change it to another email account, but maybe this would confuse your accounts team at this point in time. So far I receive no further messages from them and I carefully checked my spam folder. When should I expect them to email me?

Thank you!

[karina.harper]

Hi @Anonymous 

When I say use a new e-mail, I mean create an entirely new account with a different e-mail address. You can use a 30 day trial for now or sign up as a hobbyist.

This would be just to get you started while they work on your account. I don't know when you'll receive an e-mail.

Cheers,

Karina

[Anonymous]

It has been a week now and so far nobody from your education/license team contacted me. If this is Autodesk's definition of "critical" then I do not want to know what "important" means to them. Seriously, how difficult could it be to assign a license to an account. Maybe five mouse clicks? This is a disgrace for Autodesk.

[karina.harper]

Hi @Anonymous 

It looks like they e-mailed you yesterday asking for screenshots. I commented on the case with a link to the forum thread, but I would recommend copying and pasting that information in a reply to them.

Cheers,

Karina

[Anonymous]

Hello,

Your support member finally contacted me and claimed that the educational licenses are limited to three years and that my time is up. I checked the Education Users – Additional Terms and also the general terms and could not find a mentioning of a maximum duration. On the Fusion 360 page you write:

Free Autodesk software and/or cloud-based services are subject to acceptance of and compliance with the terms of use or other applicable terms that accompany such software or cloud-based services. Software and cloud-based services subject to an Educational license may be used solely for Educational Purposes and shall not be used for commercial, professional or any other for-profit purposes.

I see no reason why Autodesk is refusing me a license. I even asked my own IT department and they do not want to buy me a copy since they believe that Fusion 360 is for free for educators.

Can you please please please make an educational license available for me?

Thank you.

[adam.zelny]

I have also encountered this issue, and recently discovered this page that in fact details the 3 year limit, after which we will need to receive further validation in order to sustain our license. I've also sent out a message regarding my position as an educator at a 501(c)(3) organization over a week ago and haven't heard back yet. 

I can only imagine how Autodesk is navigating supplying educational institutions with software like this, for free, indefinitely. Fusion is amazing, as is the dev team behind it. 

[karina.harper]

@adam.zelny 

Your case is currently unassigned. Let me know if they get back to you and do not offer a different solution.

Karina

[Anonymous]

The website you linked is about their A360 web services, not Fusion 360. Fusion does of course use their cloud storage, but that is not the same as the usage of the software.

@karina.harper : I understand why Autodesk might want to constraint students to have indefinite access to the software for free. But academics teach for more than three years. If I had know that Autodesk will limit me then I would have considered other software options. Within your educational license you need to distinguish between teaching staff and students. They are not the same. You also need to be extra clear about your terms of use up front. Right on your Fusion 360 page you cannot tell users that the software is for free for educational use if this is limited to three years. That is really misleading. I appreciate that you managed to convince your educational team to give me a six month extension for my Fusion 360 license but I am afraid that we will have the exact same conversation again at the end of those six months. Having to go through such an elaborate support system process to get a license extended is really not a workable solution. Could you please clarify for all the educators what Autodesk's plans are concerning the educational licenses? This will have a major impact on what software we will select for our teaching.

Thank you.

[adam.zelny]

Karina, 

Thanks for the reply. I actually reported this a couple weeks ago (CaseNo:15281110), and just received a reply with the same results as bartneck- Confirmation of a 3yr license ending, and I was offered an extension of "a couple months" along with the suggestion of starting a new account with a different email, which is impractical, especially for teachers/students relying on consistent access to their files.

For the time being, I was able to activate a Startup License through my same Autodesk account, however, our non-profit org is not really a startup, as it pertains to most for-profit companies. It seems like Startup Licenses can be easily renewed on a yearly basis, which, ironically, is more convenient than the 3 year edu license. In the end I'm supporting bartneck's complaints that the details around the Education License needs attention.

What are Autodesk's goals with the Education License? If your reps are able to extend our edu licenses for a few months, why not a few years? Autodesk must have a reason for this.

[Anonymous]

These people just don’t care about 3 year expirations. I reverified 3 weeks ago. Had my license working again for about a week and the expired and read only with zero notice.  All my support requests have been unanswered or the usual bs about reinstalling fixing things,  I’ve done that 4 times through the last 5 weeks and that never affected my license status at any time.

We have started using Solid Edge and it looks very promising and runs much faster.  It’s unfortunate we will need to relearn everything.  I will never recommend any autodesk product again.