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Unable to activate a free trial for Business Standard or purchase one for my organization

Anonymous
2020-08-07T21:11:42+00:00

I am extremely frustrated by this issue and have tried everything I can think of to fix it, but am still unable to subscribe to Office 365 Business Standard (tried to activate a free trial and tried to just buy it outright). Here is what happens: 

  1. I went to Office365.com and clicked on “Try free for one Month” for Microsoft 365 Business Standard
  2. I entered all my information and created an account. The screen read “activating trial”, then displayed an error message “something went wrong”.
  3. My account was set up, but no subscription was linked to it. This is where I've now tried over and over to add a subscription to my organization's account.
  4. I go to Billing - Purchase Services - Business Standard $16/user/month and click on Start Free Trial.
  5. It redirects me to the "Prove you're not a robot" page and I enter my phone number, but don't receive a verification code. I try multiple different phone numbers, but none of them receive anything.
  6. I finally just entered the code I received when setting up my account, which for some reason worked. It redirects me to “check out, confirm your order” and I click on “try now” and this error message shows: “Please try again in a few minutes. We are unable to complete the verification check on your payment method at this time”.
  7. This persisted over and over, despite using different browsers, different devices and different credit cards (also tried incognito mode and clearing cache, I even tried a different Wifi network). I also tried activating a different subscription, no luck.
  8. I tried simply buying the subscription, without the free trial, clicked on “buy now” and got this error message when placing the order: "Please try again in a few minutes. We are unable to complete the verification check on your payment method at this time. (CV: j1Z55gy26kywzSeT.0.29.10)"
  9. Again, tried troubleshooting with same methods as described above, error message persists.
  10. I created an entirely different account using a different laptop to try and subscribe to Business Standard to see if the same errors would occur, and they did, the exact same ones.

I have spoken to 4 people from Microsoft Support, none of whom could help me fix this issue. Since the same thing happens when setting up an entirely new account, this has to be an internal issue. I am in the process of setting up a new business and this has been a real hurdle in the road. If someone has had the same issue or has another troubleshoot suggestion, please let me know.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Subscription, account, billing | For home | Windows

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Anonymous
2020-08-11T17:43:35+00:00

The issue has finally been resolved now. For other people who might run into this issue, it turns out that Microsoft runs routine audits of subscriptions which then doesn't allow you to activate any new subscriptions. If you run into this issue, tell them that they need to re-activate your account and re-enable your subscription ability. That should resolve the issue, although I am confused as to why it took this long for someone to figure it out.

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  1. Anonymous
    2020-09-02T12:41:05+00:00

    Hi.

    I forgot to describe how my issue was resolved. It was a bit similar to what already Meghan explained - some monitoring/auditing mechanism is blocking the trial activation. The official response from MS was the following:

    Good news, the issue has been resolved! We’re sorry about your failed purchase attempt. Microsoft monitors purchase activity as a security measure to protect the quality and integrity of the platform. Unfortunately, your recent purchase attempt was errantly blocked. Please wait an hour before attempting your next purchase.  We are taking active steps to learn from this error.

    So whoever has the same issue, try to talk to several support specialist until they escalate to a back end specialist who has more knowledge than the first line support :P

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  2. Anonymous
    2020-08-11T17:32:50+00:00

    The fifth Microsoft Support Agent I had to deal with e-mailed me saying the issue has been resolved, even though it has not. I still cannot purchase a subscription or activate a free trial.

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  3. Anonymous
    2020-08-08T06:03:09+00:00

    Hi Meghan,

    Thank you for posting. We are really sorry for the inconvenience cause by the issue. I have thoroughly checked all your detailed actions performed. It seems that the temporarily issue. Since we are forum support have limited permission to check your subscription details from our side. However, it can be done by our backend billing support team. I have replied in the private message please check the information at your convenience.

    Here is the link to access private message: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/privatemessage/inbox

    Once again, we are sorry for your current situation and we would truly appreciate your kind understanding.

    Note: Please do not call phone number above that is a known Tech Support SCAM phone number. We have spam reported and deleted that post

    Best regards,

    Shyamal

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