Yet again, you can take advantage of a Microsoft offer and pay more for Office 2007 than you need to.
Eileen T writes “I received this offer by email and was wondering if it’s real and good value? “
The short answer is Yes and certainly NO. Here’s the offer Eileen sent us:
The offer is real though Eileen is absolutely right to question the legitimacy of the message. In these days of phishing scams any sensible company will make sure that the sender and urls in a message are clearly from the main company domain. In this case you’d look for Microsoft.com but instead the message comes from officeliveemail.com and the ‘Buy Now’ link is to the same domain but ends up at trymicrosoftoffice.com . Microsoft marketing should follow good practices in this area both for their own sake and as an example to others.
Paying More
It sounds tempting but, as usual for these offers from Microsoft, it’s hardly the best price available.
For example, you can buy the same product for $20 less from Amazon with similar prices available from any major retailer.
To add insult, Microsoft tries to supplement the advertised price with extras added without asking the customer. This is what you’ll see if you click on the ‘Buy It’ link:
Notice that an ‘optional’ License Lock Box has been added for another $9.99. It’s called optional but a customer isn’t asked if they want it.
As we’ve mentioned before, the License Lock Box isn’t necessary and you can avoid the need for it by safely recording your Office 2007 Product Key and software download.
Microsoft makes it a little more difficult to remove this extra earner. The Quantity item isn’t adjustable. On the right is a faint and unlabelled ‘trash can’ item which will remove the extra charge.
But why pay around $100 for a downloaded version of Office when you can pay $20 less to get a DVD disk version and printed Product Key?
If you need Office 2007 right now, download the 60 day trial version and buy at your leisure.
See Also
- How many copies of Office can you install?
- Home & Student for $100 – but you can do better
- How to get the Military Appreciation Edition
- A cheaper option for Office 2007 Standard
- What’s so special about the Home and Student edition?
- Wanna pay more for Office? Use the new Microsoft store
