Earlier, New Zealand\u2019s Commerce Commission sent the firm a letter, warning of potential Fair Trading Act breaches.<\/p>\n
From October last year through to early this year, Microsoft emailed New Zealand customers to say the price of a 365 annual subscription was increasing from $179 to $229 (a 28% increase) and the price of a 365 personal subscription was rising from $129 to $179 (a 38% increase).<\/p>\n
Microsoft said 365 (which includes Outlook, Word and other popular apps) was being boosted with the addition of its Copilot AI (artificial intelligence) chatbot. It did not mention the option for customers to continue with their existing pricing if they did not want Copilot.<\/p>\n
That \u201cClassic Plan\u201d option only appeared if a customer went to cancel their subscription.<\/p>\n
In an email sent this morning, Microsoft offered New Zealand and Australian customers the opportunity to return to their old 365 pricing, with the difference they had paid in the meantime refunded.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe fell short of our standards,\u201d Microsoft said in the email, which finished with a button customers could click if they wanted to take up the refund offer.<\/p>\n
The computer says \u2018no\u2019<\/p>\n
But a number of Herald readers who clicked on the offer encountered glitches, which appeared to affect anyone who tried to claim Microsoft\u2019s refund.<\/p>\n
It was only available for the Personal, not the Family version of 365 and Kiwi customers were being asked to supply an Australian billing address.<\/p>\n
\u201cI arrived home at 5.30pm today to find the email and tried the link supplied. It is still only set up for an Australian address,\u201d reader Karen Gabolinscy told the Herald.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I went to use the \u2018message us\u2019 pop-up service, it told me I was 1140 in the queue! As at 5.52pm. I am now down to 1068 in the queue.\u201d<\/p>\n
She added, \u201cThe call centre seems to be getting through 274 calls an hour, so its going to be another three hours before they get to me in the queue.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another reader, Gisborne man Chris Henwood, complained he only had the option to switch back to the \u201cClassic\u201d 365 Family plan for $18 a month – or $216 per year, higher than the $179 he was paying before the price increase. $179 was also quoted in Microsoft\u2019s offer email, he said.<\/p>\n
Microsoft Australia-New Zealand did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The firm\u2019s PR company said, \u201cSome subscribers eligible for the refund received an incorrect link. We apologise for the inconvenience and have sent them new emails with the correct link.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tech industry veteran Robin Paterson, a former Hewlett-Packard New Zealand senior manager, who also received the 365 offer at 9.38am told the Herald: \u201cThe email says that the offer applies in New Zealand but it doesn\u2019t work here.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf our Commerce Commission had acted instead of sitting on their hands, New Zealand customers might have had the offer weeks ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
Michael Davison, a professor at Auckland University\u2019s School of Psychology, objected to some of the refund\u2019s fine print.<\/p>\n
He noted that the \u201cClassic\u201d version of 365 Family would not include Copilot, as he expected, but Microsoft\u2019s offer terms also included the line (which he forwarded) the Family edition \u201cmay not receive new feature updates\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt worries me that I may now be stuck forever in Word\/Excel\/PowerPoint etc 2025 Edition. I guess I\u2019ll get security updates, but that wasn\u2019t explicitly mentioned,\u201d Davison told the Herald.<\/p>\n
Another reader, Graham Rostron-Wood, who is also a 365 subscriber, said he tried the link after the 11am official \u201cgo live\u201d and it still did not work (it did not work for Paterson after 11am either).<\/p>\n
He was told in a support chat:<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you for your patience. I\u2019ve co-ordinated this case with our support team and confirmed that there is an issue with the link. The case has now been escalated to the appropriate team for resolution.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlease allow two\u2013three business days for us to address the issue, after which a new link should be generated so you\u2019ll be able to successfully switch to the M365 Family Classic plan and receive a refund.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was also told in the same support chat:<\/p>\n
\u201cIt appears that the link only works for users who have the M365 Personal plan. Right now, we are working on resolving the issue so M365 Family users can switch and get a refund.\u201d<\/p>\n
Palmerston North reader Richard Ram said he clicked the button on the bottom of the email to claim the refund and return to a Classic account \u2013 but he could not because Microsoft\u2019s system was asking him for an Australian billing address.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe subscribe button, when processing the payment, shows the button greyed out, with the word \u2018Loading\u2019,\u201d Ram said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI waited and waited, then saw this:\u201d<\/p>\n
Palmerston North man Richard Ram was one of a number of readers who could not claim Microsoft’s 365 refund. He enountered this error message.<\/p>\n
Late on Thursday afternoon, the digital strategist continued to encounter a series of error messages.<\/p>\n
Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald\u2019s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier, New Zealand\u2019s Commerce Commission sent the firm a letter, warning of potential Fair Trading Act breaches. From…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":120536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84883,62509,84886,84889,24812,84884,138,66037,2741,803,10039,124,4381,1872,12513,2082,84885,13313,106,24826,78,7324,26983,225,15311,609,84887,1132,2683,111,139,69,37667,23941,3333,84888,16485,29547,6851,23942,16402,312,6100,1886,370,1361,223,61,3940,28355,5977,1533],"class_list":["post-120535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-1140th","tag-62509","tag-59m","tag-a50","tag-australias","tag-billing","tag-business","tag-chat","tag-claim","tag-continue","tag-controversial","tag-could","tag-customers","tag-face","tag-failed","tag-for","tag-foulup","tag-giant","tag-head","tag-hike","tag-in","tag-lawsuit","tag-lodged","tag-market","tag-meltdown","tag-microsoft","tag-microsofts","tag-million","tag-move","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-penalties","tag-penalty","tag-price","tag-pursue","tag-pushing","tag-queue","tag-refund","tag-regulator","tag-reverse","tag-says","tag-still","tag-support","tag-tech","tag-that","tag-the","tag-to","tag-total","tag-trying","tag-which","tag-will"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}