This was what happened to us, we were a small company and were just buying Dells with Windows already installed. We had valid license keys from the factory on everything, so it didn't make sense to me that we needed some volume key for more Windows. So we didn't buy a volume license but still got the audit demand.

Microsoft was double-dipping for a long time, selling volume licensing deals to companies that were often buying preinstalled Windows anyhow, just out of fear of non-compliance. Then once you have the volume deal, Microsoft products become easier to use and dominate the company's tech and reaching new deals with Microsoft becomes a nice-business-you-got-there-shame-if-something-happened-to-it kind of conversation.

Microsoft hasn't changed a bit, just smarter about tactics.