Just an innocent looking, legally-purchased copy of Office Professional

If there is one thing Microsoft needs you to understand, it’s this:

Microsoft gives zero fucks about you.

Microsoft wants to take your money, shank you in the gut, and let you bleed out in the streets.

Microsoft wouldn’t stop to piss on your burning body in the middle of the road, and would run you over just for the inconvenience.

Yes, Microsoft is easily the absolute worst, most anti-consumer company in the world, and they don’t even care to try to convince you otherwise, let alone actually make changes to policy that would protect the consumer.

Now, you may be asking, why all the vitriol, Jason? Are you a spurned ex-employee with an axe to grind? Perhaps a personal vendetta against their new CEO? Did you purchase three separate X-box 360’s and get the Red Ring of Death on all of them?

No, not quite. Really, what even brought this up in the first place has to do with the purchase of a new computer, and my attempts to transfer the licensing of Office Professional Plus 2010 from my old computer to my new one.

Now, before I even attempted this, I made sure to reach out to a Customer Service rep via the online chat functionality of the Microsoft Help Desk.

I explained to her my situation, and she let me know that all that would be required is a simple uninstall of the Office software from my old computer, which it would then be automatically communicated to Microsoft that the license was uninstalled and de-activated from the old computer, and from there would just require a simple re-installation of the software onto my new computer, which would process easy-breezy so I could immediately get to work.

Notice the fine hologram printing, letting you know it’s a truly authentic copy of the disc.

I’m sure you didn’t even have to finish that last paragraph to know that matters did not occur in that fashion, a thought that occurred to me the moment the Customer Service rep uttered the very words. But, of course, we all know that in Customer Service, you have to give the company the benefit of the doubt and go through the motions, even when you know what they are telling you will not solve the problem at hand. (Cause, you know, we’re not idiots, most of us; we understand how to press a power button, and to make sure the electronic device in question is plugged in. *Cue neck-stabbing from Cap*)

What ensued next was no less than 5 hours of talking over the phone and via web chat to outsourced Customer Service with representatives like “Bruce” and “Leonard.” (I’m white and don’t even know a person actually named Leonard.)

Basically, it boils down to this:

Customer Service will spend an inordinate amount of time gathering your information. I spoke to no less than 4 representatives over the phone, all of whom asked for the same info before transferring me to another department. They would do things like ask me my name and what I was inquiring about, then have me hold for 3-8 real-time minutes. Then, they would ask me for the same info again, as in, “what are you calling about?” 3-8 more minutes of holding, then, “sorry, I can’t help you, I’ll have to transfer you.

When I got to the last person I would speak to, she asked me for my registration number, then when I started to read it off, she, no joke, started legit yelling at me telling me that wasn’t the right number. I then had to load a screen via MS Word that included, no exaggeration, 9 strings of 6-digit numbers. She made me read each of these to her over the phone, and then when she read them back to me, most of them were completely incorrect. (Imagine that.)

It became apparent to me after some time that the company was going out of it’s way to make things difficult for me, and deny any sort of forward progress. But I did not relent. Even in light of being constantly yelled at and cut off by this woman, I was not going to let her win and hang-up in frustration. (Seriously, I was Jedi-cool about this every step of the way, and I wish I could find a way to take that same level-headed-ness and carry it into my every day life. Baby steps.)

Finally, after confirming all of the numbers with her, she went to activate my Office software and…oh, look! It turns out that, despite having successfully used Office on my old computer for well over three years and purchasing a clearly Authorized product from Amazon.com, it seems that my copy is not only currently pirated, but has been all along!

I don’t know about you, but this looks like a pretty legit key code to me.

I let her know that this was clearly not the case, given the circumstances i described above, and her very last step before ending the call with me was to direct me to a website where I could file a claim with Microsoft to get this taken care of.

Now admittedly, there was a small part of me that could see how extreme and escalated cases would need to go through a different department, but when I got to the web site as directed, I can not explain the rage that resulted from what I was looking at.

The web site I was directed to is www.HowToTell.com

Feel free to take a quick second to check out the link above, but if you opt for the description, the entire web site is dedicated to helping you identify a legitimate, authorized copy of MS Office from a counterfeit copy.

Excuse me, but fuck you too.

You, Microsoft, are trying to insinuate a licensed copy of Office that worked successfully for 3+ years without error, purchased first-party from Amazon at full-retail price, suddenly became pirated when I wanted to switch the license over to a different system?

That is bullshit.

You know it’s bullshit.

I know it’s bullshit.

Everyone reading this knows it’s bullshit.

Yes, that was fully sealed before I opened my brand-new Office Pro software.

So, yes, Microsoft has instructed all of their outsourced Customer Service Representatives to give You and I the run-around should we ever encounter an issue with our installation or licensing, and that should You or I push matters far enough, the ultimate response should be to instruct us that our copy of MS Office is pirated, and that there is nothing they can do about it, and You and I will not only have to purchase a new copy of Office, but we should make sure that we know the difference between a pirated copy and a retail copy. (Again, cause we’re all fucking idiots.)

I don’t know about you, but I certainly appreciate a healthy dose of unfair admonishment when I’m being nailed in the ass by a heartless corporation that I forked over literally hundreds of dollars to for something that didn’t perform as promised, if at all.

So, where does that leave us in terms of a response? Generally, the correct Course of Action would be to resolve never to purchase or use said company’s products ever again. But as it so happens, Microsoft has themselves something of a monopoly on Business Software, such as Excel and Word, which are industry standards and requisite in many fields.

Curse you, necessary software!

As a result, if you absolutely have to have Office ( I do; a fact that pisses me off to no end,) the best thing to do is to go to eBay or Amazon and purchase from a third-seller. Amazon and eBay are absolutely wonderful when it comes to protecting you from fraudulent sales and transactions (Generally, there is a bit of wait time involved, but you will always get your money back from those two if you got burned.) You will want to search for any Office software that is not the most recent software available, MS Office 2013 for example.

See, all of the older software has already been attributed to and written off Microsoft’s bottom line. As far as the people making decisions are concerned, any sale of older software through a retailer or third-party is no sale at all, as that sale has already been recorded and applied to a previous year. As of the time of this writing, the only Office sales that matter to Microsoft Executives are Office 2016 and Office 365.

If I can give you one piece of advice to leave with, it is this:

Do not, under any circumstances, subscribe to Office 365.

Office 365 is a subscription-based license of MS Office, and requires no less than $70 a year. Every last dollar of that goes directly to Microsoft, and this is what we need to avoid.

Generally, wholesale pricing is 40%-50% of retail price, so when Microsoft sells to a retailer who then sells to you, they see less of your money, which is most certainly the overall goal here.

If you currently are in need of Office software, and are committed to making sure you don’t let Microsoft see a dime of your money that will go towards their current bottom line for the year, try something like this link, in which you can get all of the same functionality, at a better price, while in turn preventing Microsoft from any sort of current financial benefit. eBay is great for getting around corporate greed and apathy.

It’s one thing to protect your business from piracy, but to do so with such a blatant disregard for the hard-earned money that so many of your customers have flushed down the drain, speaks to your utter contempt for the consumer, and as such, you do not deserve any of our money.

But then again, Microsoft doesn’t give a fuck what we think.

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