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Office 365, Cheap eBay purchase, lifetime access to Office 365 and OneDrive

Anonymous
2016-08-23T16:48:15+00:00

I recently bought an Office 365 from eBay (Australia) for approx US$28.

The eBay ad claims that its for 5 PC's and includes OneDrive 1TB for 5 users.

It states that the license is "forever subscription" or "lifetime".

As stated in the eBay ad, Microsoft contacted me via email with an email address and password to activate my account. All went well and exactly as described in the eBay advertisment.

I activated it and have already installed Microsoft Office on 2 Windows computers.

I logged into "my account" then clicked on "subscriptions", my license is apparently "Office 365 Education Plus for students"

When I go into OneDrive I noticed at the top of the page it states "OneDrive @ Galileo School for Gifted Learning"

So I believe my suspiciously cheap Office 365 subscription is from this school.

So my questions are

  1. Have I bought a legitimate copy of Office 365?
  2. Can this school access my OneDrive documents?
  3. Is it true that my "forever subscription" is really forever?
  4. If it's not forever how long may my Office 365 and OneDrive subscription last for?
  5. Is there anything else of concern that I have not considered?

I would really appreciate advice from someone who is familiar with the type of purchase that I have made.

Thanks in advance,

Luke (aka PukeyLuke)

Microsoft 365 and Office | Install, redeem, activate | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2016-08-23T18:44:49+00:00

No you dont have a legit copy, which should have been blatantly obvious from the price paid - you dont get something for nothing !

A subscription license is an annual or monthly paid for license

Your install, if its activated, will eventually be blocked and you will lose anything stored on OneDrive

MS does not contact users to activate

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  1. Anonymous
    2016-09-12T14:28:12+00:00

    "- you dont get something for nothing !" Yes I know that, as stated I paid US$28.

    I am unsure why you found it necessary to be hostile to me in your initial message.

    I think my question is legitimate coming from someone that has never bought Microsoft Office before.

    No it was not "blatantly obvious" to me, as this eBay seller had sold many copies of Office 365 and had excellent feedback. Also there were many other sellers selling the identical product.

    If it was blatantly obvious I'm sure Microsoft would have contacted eBay to remove the illegal/pirated software!!

    So on top of being rude and condescending, you didn't even answer most of my questions.

    BTW this is not the first time you have done this, Altissimus asked on January 8 2016

    "Are Office 365 licences sold on eBay legitimate?"

    see link below for your uninformative reply.

    http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_install-mso_win10/are-office-365-licences-sold-on-ebay-legitimate/bdef2787-6696-4fbc-be3d-729118f3b77a

    Clearly you left this other member (Altissimus) wondering why they wasted their time using this community forum when people like you reply with answers like this!!

    Luke (aka PukeyLuke)

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  2. Anonymous
    2017-04-16T12:00:27+00:00

    You are right in that only Microsoft can activate their products either a disk u bought or download. However any business that is a registered reseller of Microsoft products can resell legally. 

    I suspect that you are buying a legit copy but it is either a academic licence (illegal for u to use if u r not the  academic it is registered to) or  u are only getting one of the 5 licences (the seller is splitting the 5 user licence) again illegal, or a volume licence where a company will buy say 10,000 office licences but all the same key,  how eBay seller has gotten hold of this and is selling of individual licences,  again illegal 

    I am sure Microsoft knows about these sales but I doubt they care with billions of sales. 

    They could disable key but won't.

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-09-13T13:56:06+00:00

    Hi RonBarker,

    *** edited 

    As you can see from the links many (thousands) of businesses sell Office 365, as you may notice they're all different prices, they are all legal and are all significantly cheaper than buying from Microsoft Australia for AU$89.

    I am suprised you and your friend Palcouk did not realise that you can purchase an Office 365 subscription outside of Microsoft, especially considering that you are both "Launch Experts"

    BTW I'm not sure how your comment was meant to help my situation, were you trying to give me advice??

    Cheers,

    Luke

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  4. Anonymous
    2016-09-16T17:41:35+00:00

    You can buy Microsoft products from preferred Microsoft Vendors.  Sure, you have to register through MS, but the actual product/license can be bought from someone that is a certified vendor of MS products.  In countries where it's not feasible to have boxed copies of software, MS actually sells the keys through vendors that are affiliated to MS, but they're not MS.

    EDIT:  Here's a link to becoming a licensed key reseller for MS products

    https://partner.microsoft.com/en-us/licensing/become-a-licensing-reseller

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