Another Office promotion under the microscope
Down in Australia there’s some special offers for Office 2013. Alas, when you look at the details it’s not such a great deal.
The Get Modern offers for small businesses are summarized by Microsoft like this:
15% off
The headline says “15% off Office 2013 Pro Plus + Windows 8 Pro” which can be taken one of two ways:
- 15% off Office and Windows 8 combined
- 15% off Office only
Guess which one Microsoft chooses? Correct – 15% off Office 2013 software only and possibly not even that.
This offer isn’t a cashback or discount from Microsoft (the company is very firm on this latter point). The resellers are ‘required’ to pass onto customers discounts of ‘up to’ 15% when buying specific combinations of Windows 8 and Office 2013 Professional Plus.
You have to buy at least 5 licences of each type to qualify.
We’d be curious to hear from customers who have tried getting this promotional discount (as always, confidentiality assured) since the wording is quite vague.
While retailers are ‘required to pass through to customers a discount’ the discount can be ‘up to 15%’ meaning the retailer could offer 0% if they can get away with it. In fact the “Reseller is at all times free to set and determine the price at which it sells Microsoft products“.
So it seems that the customer needs to be aware of this promotion when negotiating a price with a retailer, using it as some leverage to get the price down.
Terms and Conditions for the ‘15% off’ promotion.
