I have a single user working from his home in London. Sharing our services is easy and I hardly ever hear from him. This morning I got a call from this guy and he told me that he will need Microsoft Publisher license for his soon to be expired 60 day trial.
Sound like an easy task, right? Wrong!
My first thought was going to Amazon and buy a new box, since he already got the software he does not need the CD and I can just give him the key. Make sense and easy to do BUT there is one catch – different countries have different licensing policies. Yes, the same Microsoft has different policies and prices for different countries where EU is even more complicated because of the antitrust case with Microsoft.
Calling Microsoft here in the US resulted with a simple answer – you have to buy the license in the UK. Can you blame them for preferring € or £ over $US?
(tip: the €\£ signs come up when holding ALT and typing 0128\0163)
Calling my Microsoft sales rep (which is not a Microsoft employee but work for one of the biggest retailers) the answer was different, he said that for Office licenses the license is per language and if I need an English version I can buy it in the US.
I Googled and Binged but wherever you go, including Microsoft.com you get different answers or interpretations of the rules.
I’m still waiting for few answers but one cannot stop wondering why can’t Microsoft make licensing easier?
No comments:
Post a Comment