Why must Microsoft make it so hard to buy 365?

Forums › Microsoft Windows › Why must Microsoft make it so hard to buy 365?

Aaroona

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#96106 20-Jan-2012 11:50

I signed up for a trial this morning and was testing the performance. I am now happy with the performance and want to purchase a 1 user $5US license for hosted exchange.
I try to do it and link it to my current account and it tells me I must sign out to sign up again. I cant find any way to purchase this... any one have any ideas?

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Snowflake

#571223 20-Jan-2012 13:36

are you logging in to https://portal.microsoftonline.com/ and choosing the subscriptions/purchase option?

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sbiddle

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#571224 20-Jan-2012 13:37

You should also have pricing in $NZ

Aaroona

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#571227 20-Jan-2012 13:40

Hi yes, I've tried all that.

and yes, I realize the pricing is US, local price is 7.75, but for the sake of the monkeys Microsoft employs I had to quote the $5US since they didnt seem to know local pricing.

Just got off the phone to the office 365 services team - what a crap experience. Had to repeat myself at least 3 times for EVERYTHING.

After the damn phone call, it turns out I STILL cant buy it from that account.
Im over this, Microsoft can get stuffed.

Thanks for your help anyways guys.

CYaBro

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#571252 20-Jan-2012 14:35

Try this link.

Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.

Aaroona

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#571262 20-Jan-2012 14:51

Nope :( Thanks for trying though

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ferg_nz

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#571293 20-Jan-2012 15:39

Try google apps you can get a 10 user account for free and just activate the services you want e.g mail just an idea can be a bit of a knack to get to the free sign up page but here it is in case you want it https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/standard/new3

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paulb001

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#571325 20-Jan-2012 16:25

Hi Aaron, I work for Microsoft and manage our Cloud services business in NZ. Sorry to hear that you are having issues signing up for Exchange online.

My suggestion is to login to your trial at https://portal.microsoftonline.com

From here you can convert your trial to a paid subscription - click on Admin at the top, then on the left hand side under Subscriptions you will have the option to purchase - you should get options for all our offerings from standalone exchange all the way to our enterprise skus. If you don't it’s possible that you have selected some other standalone trial that cannot be upgraded or changed.

If you continue to have issues there is a purchase and support guide here also(6mg word doc): http://g.microsoftonline.com/0BXPS00EN-NZ/1125 or log a support request via https://mocp.microsoftonline.com/site/support.aspx

As an aside you are looking at the standalone Exchange Online only, for only a few more dollars you can get Sharepoint, Lync and Office Webapps, check out:

Individual and Small Business Plan
http://www.microsoft.com/en-nz/office365/plans/small-business/email-calendar.aspx

Medium and Enterprise plans
http://www.microsoft.com/en-nz/office365/enterprise-solutions/business-benefits.aspx

Please let me know how you get on and if I can help further - you can contact me on nzcloud@microsoft.com

Paul Bowkett
Microsoft New Zealand
http://microsoft365.com
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http://linkedin.com/in/paulbowkett

paulspain

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#571338 20-Jan-2012 16:40

Aaroona - which plan are you signing up for? Was this the same as the trial you registered for?

It's worth noting that if you sign up for trial of one product it can be confusing to then convert that to paid subscription of a different Microsoft Online product.

Paul Spain
Founder: Gorilla Technology, NZ Tech Podcast

bigal_nz

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#571340 20-Jan-2012 16:46

Its a good service (Office 365) - If you can get through the sign up process it is worth it!!

Feel free to call me (PM) and I will help also.

Regards,

-Al

rphenix

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#571345 20-Jan-2012 16:51

ferg_nz: Try google apps you can get a 10 user account for free and just activate the services you want e.g mail just an idea can be a bit of a knack to get to the free sign up page but here it is in case you want it https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/standard/new3

Just dont try and do anything fancy like wanting to change your primary domain with an alias/secondary domain :) Cant do it without dropping the aliased domain temporarily, creating a new google apps account and then importing from one domain to another! Many examples like that, so I'm not a major fan of google apps.

Aaroona

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#571420 20-Jan-2012 19:38

Alright, it seems everything is working, finally.

To give a more cool headed reply, following one I just deleted which was a bit heavy for the forum....

Microsoft rang me (Someone from NZ which was certainly a nice surprise, Paul and his team from AK) and offered some suggestions and talked things out with me to discuss the best way to proceed.
There was discussion of releasing my old ID and recreating it, which would have been great had I not needed it basically now and the process taking some 2 days or so. So I opted for a new alias (which is not ideal, and should be carefully explained somewhere that you cant swap plan types to avoid the mess to begin with).
I've now signed up and verified my domain (which was a bit slow, as other tools were reporting the new records, but microsoft wasnt) but finally 2 hours later it all seems to have verified. I'm currently in the process of importing all my data from my old provider. (the reason all this happened was because my provider previously, had gone down for 3 days where I lost important emails and had a few trades lost because of it). So between all the issues from my previous provider then moving to Microsoft, it was certainly no walk in the park.

I would like to say thanks to Paul and his team though for getting onto it so quickly - had they not called while I was on the ferry home and waited till Monday, they would have lost me to Google. So good on them for getting on this.

I will update later on how performance is, but from earlier testing today, I believe it's going to be alright.

Thanks again everyone for offering up some assistance!

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Ragnor

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#571442 20-Jan-2012 20:20

Side question is office 365 for NZ delivered from the Singapore or Sydney MS data centre these days?

billgates

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#571445 20-Jan-2012 20:26

Singapore

Do whatever you want to do man.

paulspain

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#571447 20-Jan-2012 20:30

Singapore is where the main datacentre is for Office 365 users in NZ. Backup datacentre is Hong Kong.

Paul Spain
Founder: Gorilla Technology, NZ Tech Podcast

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#571466 20-Jan-2012 21:37

A bit off topic, but we used to run Microsoft BPOS and our migration to Microsoft 365 was last weekend. No problems in the migration, everything done and done...

At least it's Microsoft Online Services Login gone from startup ;)

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