Skip to content

Latest Microsoft Office sales scam at Amazon

While we were looking for Publisher 2019 on Amazon, we found more obviously illegal sales of Microsoft Office products.

We’ve mentioned this before.  Blatantly illegal Office licences sold on Amazon by third-parties.

Why is this MS Office is illegal?

  • Office 2019 Professional Plus is not sold retail. It’s only sold as part of a volume licence to organizations.
  • The ‘box shot’ is wrong, showing Office Professional 2016. Wrong product and version.  A legitimate seller would not make such a simple mistake or let it remain unfixed.
  • The price is absurdly low. $30 or even $70 is way below any legitimate price for Office 2019 Professional Plus.

Similar scams were happening a year ago. Office 2019 Professional Plus from Amazon for under $50?  One customer had a lot of trouble getting Amazon to act when she was sold a fake Office Maybe you can’t even trust Amazon when buying Microsoft Office 

 

Even if you get a product key that works, there’s a risk that Microsoft will cancel the illegally sold product.  Modern product activation gives Microsoft the ability to disable software they deem to be a breach of licence.

If you still want to try see Protect yourself buying Microsoft Office from Amazon or Ebay

Why does Amazon allow these products to be posted?

It’s disappointing that products like this are still on Amazon.

These offers should trigger alarms and a take-down at Amazon.  The price and the fact that it’s not even a retail product is enough.

Even if Amazon didn’t notice, surely Microsoft’s anti-piracy section should see it and ask Amazon to take the product down? It doesn’t take a lot of effort to find, we found it accidently on the first page of search results.

Finding these illegal sales isn’t hard and should be in the corporate interest of Amazon and Microsoft.  Their continued inaction is hard to understand and a danger to their customers.

 

See our guide to checking what you buy from Amazon or Ebay  from any source and What to do if you buy illegal software.

About this author

Office-Watch.com

Office Watch is the independent source of Microsoft Office news, tips and help since 1996. Don't miss our famous free newsletter.