“Your IT department has turned off signup for Partner Center” when migrating to new Action Pack / Microsoft Partner Center

i got stuck on that one while trying to migrate action pack account to the new MS Partner Center. without the migration it would not let me renew.

after 3 attempts i ended up talking with someone competent who found that this error might occur for users who have o365-hosted mails for domain used in the migration process. solution suggested by the helpful person i ended up talking with:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/users-groups-roles/directory-self-service-signup

COMMAND:   Set-MsolCompanySettings -AllowEmailVerifiedUsers $true -AllowAdHocSubscriptions $true 

it worked immediately – i was able to migrate to the new profile.. although i had to use a new mail address, not registered earlier for any MS services.