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My Microsoft Odyssey

Things happen. This is a nice way of putting things that can really strain every nerve in your body. I just had a recent experience with Microsoft. It all came about when I decided to transfer my Microsoft Office 2016 Plus Professional from my old computer to the new one I bought. I have been using this software for about one and a half years without any problems. I deactivated it on the old computer and installed it on the new one, but when it came time to type in the product key it would not accept it. What do you do in a situation like this? You do the dreaded thing, you call Microsoft. The reason I say dreaded is any time I have ever had to call them several things would happen. The first is I would be waiting on the phone for a long time for someone to answer the call and when it was answered I sometimes would get someone who I could not understand. I didn’t want to call them but after looking through documents from Microsoft I could see that was the only choice I had if I wanted to get the problem straightened out.

I thought this would be an easy problem to resolve, boy was I wrong. I thought this because one other time I had a problem like this and they reset the number and it worked fine. The first thing I did was call Microsoft and when I went through several robotic choices I finally got to the one I thought was correct. I was told how important this call was to them and all their agents were busy and that I was number 38 in the line. I didn’t initially know if that was bad or good but as time went by I realized they only had a couple of people taking care of callers and each one seemed to have a complicated problem because the movement from 38 on down was very slow. After about half an hour of holding on to the phone I felt like throwing it out the window and wondered if calls were really being answered or were people just dropping out. I decided to give it another fifteen minutes or so as the numbers were going down and they reached me and I was actually happy about that. Then I heard the voice and it was a strain to understand at times.

I was asked a lot of questions and was on with the agent for about 15 minutes at which time he said the product key number was blocked and he couldn’t help me because it was a commercial product key and they only handled home cases. I said how about giving me a break I had waited for almost 45 minutes to get someone and to my surprise he said okay he knew what I went through. Was this going to be solved? No not a chance because after a few minutes he told me they didn’t have the power to release the number and I had to call the department which handled commercial cases. I was annoyed but what choice did I have, so I called the number and after a few different connections I was told I had to pay for service and since it was after hours it would cost $499.00. This is for a program which costs less than one-third that. I hung up and dialed again and this time during one of the questions I said “agent”. A robotic voice said it couldn’t understand me and asked for my choice again. I kept saying “agent” and after about four times it said it couldn’t understand me and actually connected me to any agent who I told my problem to.

This agent asked me questions again which were similar to the first agent including the product key number but this guy had a hard time understanding some of the letters in the key but we finally straightened that out. The only good part was I was only on the wait line for a minute before making a connection. He checked the product number and informed me it was blocked. I told him I knew this and could he please unblock it. He said he would like to help but I had to contact the home division and this was commercial division. I said wait a second they sent me to you after I had waited over 45 minutes to get them. They said the software was commercial. He said there was nothing he could do and they were wrong but he would give me a case number and if they gave me a problem to tell them to contact his division. Reluctantly I called back the home division again but I did it the next day early and got someone in a few seconds.

The lady asked me what the problem was and I could actually understand her very well. I told her I had called the home division because when moving Office 2016 Professional Plus from my old computer to my new one, the product key was no longer accepted and was referred to the commercial division who said I needed to do this through the home division. Again I answered all the question and she looked up the number and said it was blocked. I said I know that and I would like it unblocked. She said it had to be done by the commercial division. I got angry and said I was there already and they gave me a case number and said if there was a problem you could contact them. They didn’t want to do it and the agent told me she would connect me to a specific party in the commercial division that handles these problems. I said are you sure because I am getting tired of being bounced around? She said I promise.

I was connected back to the commercial division and relayed the entire story again and all that transpired each time I spoke to an agent. Again I was asked a lot of questions but I was not referred somewhere else. Apparently this was the right number but the result was not good. They looked up the number and guess what they said, they said it was blocked. I said I know that please unblock it. The agent said he couldn’t because they block all counterfeit numbers. I said wait a second I had this on my other machine for about a year and a half it couldn’t be counterfeit and the agent said that didn’t mean anything and explained there were five moves allowed for Office 2016 and the person who sold me Office gave me a number with some moves left on it and people kept using that number until all the moves were used up and Microsoft spotted that. He advised me to fill out a counterfeit software report which I did and said maybe Microsoft would help.

I don’t expect much from the report since I bought the software on Ebay and thought it was legitimate since the seller had thousands of sales. I guess there is a lesson here and it is buy your software from the company expect to pay a lot more.

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