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Technology Guarantee delay woes

As time runs out for the Office 2010 Tech Guarantee, a report of a problem

With only a week to go on the Office 2010 Technology Guarantee, Tom K. has written about his troubles getting a free copy of Office 2010 for his recently purchased Office 2007.

He successfully activated his Office 2007 and got the all-important Product ID. Right away he went to claim his Office 2010 download only to get the response that his Product ID didn’t qualify for the Technology Guarantee.

So he called Microsoft Support and after the usual excuses and delays he had the problem ‘escalated’.

Finally he was told that he had to wait ’24 hours’ between activating Office 2007 and claiming his Office 2010 download.

That’s sounds very strange to us:



  • It’s possible that the activation system takes some time to replicate data to the ‘Technology Guarantee’ system but that delay should be measured in minutes at most – not a day. If it takes a day then it doesn’t say a lot about Microsoft’s SQL Server database.
  • It’s also possible that the support staff had little idea what the problem was and the ‘wait a day’ advice was more intended to defer the problem until another shift or in the hope that the problem (or customer) will go away.

We’ll be interested to hear how Tom gets on with his claim for Office 2010. He told us about it in case other people strike a similar problem when activating Office 2007 then claiming the ‘free’ Office 2010 soon afterwards.

In the meantime there’s no need to panic. The first deadline is Thursday 30 September 2010 that’s the last date you have to buy Office 2007, install and activate it to get the Product ID.

As long as you have the Office 2007 Product ID by the end of September, you have another month, to 31 October 2010, to apply online for your copy of Office 2010.

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