Question
How do I remove unused agent seats from my subscription, or downgrade the number of agent seats I'm paying for?
Answer
If you have an unused agent seat on your account that you no longer use, you can remove it from your subscription. You must be the account owner to make these changes. To view the number of active seats on your account, visit the Team members page.
Warning: Before removing agent seats from your account, make sure the seats are empty so you do not lose tickets or other data. For more information, see the article: Best practices for removing agents.
Customers with Zendesk sales-assisted (managed) accounts may need to contact their account representative to make this change.
For self-service customers to make this change
- Follow the instructions to purchase agent seats.
- Update the number of agent seats you need by editing the Seats field.
Reduce the number of seats as well as add them.
These changes will not go into effect until your next billing cycle. For more information, see the article: Why did my subscription change not go into effect immediately?
74 comments
Marianne H
I receive an error message when attempting to downgrade to contact support. I am the billing admin.
Support sends me to this page on how to downgrade.
Our account manager no longer works for the company and their replacement is also now not responding.
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Kacey Zeccola
Hi Marianne,
I'm sorry to hear about this - please hang tight while I track down the right folks for you internally.
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Tyler Jordan
We are having the same issue as everyone else in this chain. We opened a ticket two months ago to reduce our license count and there has been zero progress. I escalated to our account managers a month ago and didn't even get a response. In a separate ticket, we requested to move from a sales-assisted to a self-service account and were first told we did not meet the "necessary criteria...per [Zendesk's] account requirements". When I then asked for further elaboration on that criteria, I was told it was a technical limitation of the system. Following up on these tickets has needlessly wasted hours of our staff's time. Changing license counts should not be this difficult (and clearly isn't, if you want to add licenses rather than remove them), especially for a company that specializes in customer experience software. Brett Bowser, any chance you can help?
1
Ttaylor
I have been trying since July to reduce the number of seats on our account. The last I heard back from Zendesk was on September 25 from Michael Belista stating they are aware of my request and will make sure the right team is involved to resolve my ticket. This is no way to do business.
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Stephen Wilson
Finally got a new docusign...no offer to refund the overage only to future quote for a few months of service as credit for the overpayment. 5 months of waiting to get this resolution. Zendesk you need to fix this...you were once the best and now you're circling the bin
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Brett Bowser
Stephen Wilson thanks for sharing this feedback with us and I will be sure to pass it along to the appropriate teams.
Ttaylor I wasn't able to find a ticket associated with the profile you're reaching out from here. We're you able to get your account adjusted? Do you have a ticket # that I can take a look at?
Tyler Jordan I'm happy to help any way I can. Do you have an existing ticket # you're working on? I wasn't able to find one attached to your profile here. Any additional information you can provide (within reason in a public forum of course :) ) is super helpful!
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Ttaylor
Brett Bowser The ticket number I have is 11725461. It shows to be in an open status since July.
1
Tyler Jordan
Thank you, Brett Bowser! It's under one of my co-worker's name, since he's the billing admin. The ticket # is 11846748.
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Paul Strong
Having the same issue gettimng unneededAgent accounts removed. used to be able to do it via the admin pages - but not any longer. Have been round teh houses of support staff, renewals team and account manager. very frustrating. also being charged for customer lists that we dont use! Feels like very poor service
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Tyler Jordan
Brett Bowser, were you able to locate the ticket? Any updates?
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Brett Bowser
Tyler Jordan, Ttaylor and Paul StrongThanks again for flagging this. I've reached out internally requesting an update on each of your tickets as soon as possible. Appreciate you bringing this to our attention and I will keep you posted on what I hear back.
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Matt Watson
I am also trying to downgrade my seat count. Funny how it works fine to increase the count. Can you open an issue for me and get sales to contact me please?
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Brett Bowser
Matt Watson thanks for following up here. I see you have a couple of tickets open with our Customer Care team who are currently looking into this so they will follow up with you ASAP.
If there's anything else I can help with in the meantime let me know!
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Bill
Having an issue getting my request to reduce our # of licenses fulfilled. Please escalate my ticket #12217945.
Thanks
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Brett Bowser
Thanks for following up here. I bumped the priority of your ticket and can confirm that it's assigned to the appropriate team to assist further.
Appreciate your patience while we look into this for you!
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Erik Christensen
I got signed to a legacy pricing plan under the assumption we could change our user count. I've reached out a few times and I'm being told that if we reduce our license count we loose any legacy pricing, so we're stuck playing for seats that go unused. How is this treating legacy users fairly?
I want to reduce operating costs when needed and being locked into a contract where there is zero flexibility is a really bad experience.
@brett bowser is there some policy in place that prohibits user count changes on contracts?
1
Brett Bowser
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Erik Christensen
Brett Bowser
My Account Manager told me too bad, if you change you're agent count at this point you loose your legacy pricing.
Ticket #11585540 goes back to June 2023.
When we were granted the legacy pricing we had unused users on our account as we were laying off people and I was very clear on this in my request because with this locked user count for agents we are now paying all this money for people no longer on staff.
I have no problem locking into a term contract, but basically this term was pushed on us without us agreeing. All we got was hey, you are valued as a long time customer so here's legacy pricing.
I was pushed away from this over and over but I insist to see the agreement and policy outlining this that I agreed to. I have no problem paying for contracts where I lock in like this, but it feels forced and with no response other than telling us to bugger off when pricing changed if we needed to lower our user count.
I would prefer an account manager who would work with us through changes we needed rather than telling me we're forced into a situation that we have no control in.
If I can't get my user count down to just a few people then I need to get off the platform and that really sucks.
1
Benedek Farkas
Erik, we have a similar story to yours. We've been a customer since January 2015, more than half of the time since this product has existed. We were notified by Sell in December 2022 (ticket #11067572) about the upcoming pricing changes and that we will be upgraded to the Enterprise plan without the subscription fee changing. We didn't ask for it, but that's really nice, actually; give credit where credit is due.
They also stated that "Enjoy this updated plan with no change to your cost per seat unless you either upgrade or downgrade your plan.".
Let me emphasize here that "subscription plan" and "seat count" are two completely different dimensions of a subscription and I've never encountered any situation where these two were confused or were mentioned in an ambiguous way.
In May 2023, we had 1 seat removed from our subscription. Initially, the Service Order Form had the retail price of the Enterprise plan on it ($199 at the time), which has been subsequently corrected (because my colleague called it out to the support agent) to the legacy price ($39) as "Effective price" before signing. This was handled in ticket #11357724.
In July 2023, our monthly recurring card payment jumped up from $156 ($39/month/seat for 4 seats) to $876 ($219/month/seat), coinciding with the overall pricing updates at the time. Let me mention that there were two payments made on the legacy pricing between the seat count change and this pricing update, which is suspicious to me. If a seat count should trigger losing the legacy pricing (even though we have a signed contract that says otherwise), it should've taken effect by the next payment, not 2 months later.
Anyway, I reached out to the support team (ticket #11743651) and it was probably the worst experience I had of this kind. 1-2 weeks routinely passed without getting a reply and there wasn't even a hint of an apologetic tone. After some back-and-forth asking for a refund and restoring our original plan, we asked for an immediate downgrade of our plan (to Growth) on the 14th of August for the first time. Then I asked for it repeatedly and it took until the 10th of October for the agent to reply "I can of course work on the down grade, however I cannot process a refund on this account as this account is not applicable for a refund.". Meanwhile, they tried to upsell me into a 3-year contract, which I declined (and expressed my disapproval), then they had the audacity to try again...
Note: We made 3 payments on the full price of the Enterprise plan, 2 of which were after we asked for the downgrade.
Anyway, I also attempted multiple times get an explanation for being ineligible for a refund, which were completely ignored. Then I opened ticket #12155978 to follow-up about it and it was simply closed without a reply. Wow...
Brett Bowser I saw your replies in other threads (and there are an alarming number of threads about overcharges and ignored seat reduction requests), which gives me some hope that Zendesk cares about its customers (at least I can see that you do). I'm looking forward to your reply with your thoughts on the above.
1
Brett Bowser
Apologies for the delay. I see you still have a ticket open with your Account Manager and our Renewals team. Unfortunately I'm rather limited on what I can assist with from my end so I do apologize for not being more help here. From my understanding, the legacy plan you're currently on is no longer available so any license changes would require you be updated to our existing plans. So to remain on your current legacy plan with the lower price, you wouldn't be able to downgrade your agent seat count. If you have any additional questions or concerns, I would recommend following up in the ticket you have open with the team (#12311743). It looks like our dedicated team replied back to you yesterday with some additional context regarding your request.
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Marianne H
We had a similar issue which took 6 months for us to actually downgrade from Enterprise to Professional with several meetings and numerous emails. While we were on a legacy plan, our price was nothing close to what is mentioned from Benedek above.
I am afraid to change the number of seats (we have 43) as every time we do, we are immediately billed for an entire month and not given a credit or refund for previous overcharges automatically. My fight for a refund then continues.
We will NEVER take an annual lock in for X number of seats as we really miscalculated one year and overpaid by $100K.
By the way Zendesk, I will be at that Engage conference later this week where I notice Zendesk will also be attending or presenting. Happy to meet someone in person and discuss how I really feel.
1
Brett Bowser
Hey Marianne H thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts with us here. I'm going to loop in your AE and let them know you're attending Engage later this week. They may be able to get you connected with someone at the event.
Let me know if you have any other questions in the meantime!
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Erik Christensen
Benedek Farkas You make an interesting observation, and glad it was in writing for you as well.
Considering I haven't changed my plan then the policy about not offering adjustments to our subscription is bogus as the plans not changing, just the user count. Two separate items that should have been clarified differently if Zendesk was confusing / mixing the two.
This whole thing infuriates me, and even tho I am a small company, it's actions like this that destroy the reputation of such a good product.
I hope other managers or ops take note, the agreements and contracts are one sided with Zendesk and quite frankly the lack of billing/account support has been a consistent failure point for customer experience... Just look through the forums for what all of the people here and other places are noting – Brett Bowser and team aside, along with the rep who called me after raising issue on this post, again.
I would imagine that payment providers would take issue with the terms of the service being misconstrued like this. Why am I being forced to pay for users when my plan level isn't changing? Months and months of inflated charges and NO value for the money along with inaction on the part of the provider
eg. Zendesk basically saying tough luck we don't offer that plan anymore so no changes... except quantity of users is not the plan itself... LOL
Perhaps that's what has to happen here! / s
ZENDESK WAKE UP. Give the users who supported product development and were loyal over many users, the ability to actually change user counts just like all the other users on the platform who have a subscription. It's within your power to do this and you should respect paying customers a bit more than saying tough luck.
Forcing us to fight back is not right and a terrible way to honour the "legacy" users you gave thanks too with these "upgrades at no extra charge".
I don't want to hear from another rep who doesn't really have any power over this. The powers that be at Zendesk should take note and realize that these are ridiculous ways to force people into moving off legacy pricing, it's predatory and an insult to those who invested around the platform (time and money).
I'd be down with even talking about different price plans, but what's the chance this kind of tactic doesn't happen again? Imagine if you had 1000's of users, etc. Insane!
I hope some enterprise customers take note and maybe the little fish down stream (our co's) will benefit from policy change once some large accounts take notice. Imagine all the savings IT MANAGERs :D
1
Brett Bowser
Erik Christensen and Benedek Farkas thank you both for the detailed feedback regarding making account changes on your end. I can definitely understand your frustration and I will be sharing your feedback with the appropriate teams internally so they are aware. I can't promise there will be any changes made but I will do my best to get this in front of the right people.
I'll keep you posted as I find out more and I've looped in your AE's so they are aware as well.
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Benedek Farkas
Thanks Brett Bowser!
I'd like to note though that there was a communication regarding the upcoming price changes (I think an email we received in early 2023 mentioned a 20% increase across the board), which didn't really raise any concerns for us, since we had a price guarantee in writing. But in our case it was 471%...
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David Kirkaldie
Last year 20 days before my renewal I contacted support to reduce the agents for my account. At the time it would not let me adjust the number of seats down in the Admin Center; only up.
It took three months for someone to contact me and assure me it would be resolved but not until the next renewal. I asked for this in writing, was assured they would send something, and nothing came.
I circled back with Sales 4 months before my subscription to make sure that I do not have the same problem and was assured they would take care of it given the troubles I had. The sales person then emailed back and said I was qualified to open a ticket myself. The only reason I went through sales was because I was not getting helped elsewhere.
My renewal a year later was today and I am still being billed for the seat. I contacted the salespersons' manager since the salesperson was on vacation but never heard back.
Edit: support did answer and this was resolved relatively quickly this year unlike the months it took last year. Despite loving the product, I will not recommend it to an organization that is not large enough to have a person dedicated to running ZenDesk. Given the quicker turn around I am hopeful that the support has improved and I can one day recommend it.
1
Mike DR
Thank you for sharing your feedback, I also see you have been assisted by our sales team on the ticket you opened. I'll give them a tap in case you need extra help for your request.
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Fabian Brocken
Trying to reduce the seats, but still no answer from support or sales.
Brett Bowser
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Marianne H
Our lawyer sent a certified letter requesting the number of licenses be reduced.
Zendesk
989 Market St
San Francisco, CA 94103
They answered after that.
1
Lahin Ahmed
Thanks
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