License Tom on Groupon: Microsoft partner or scam?

Question

I bought a Microsoft Office 2024 license using a Groupon that said it was being sold by a Microsoft partner. When I tried to redeem it, I was sent an email from License Tom, directing me to download Office from their site. I requested a refund, but both Groupon and License Tom refused even though I did not use the key. Groupon says the seller *says* they are a legitimate Microsoft partner and that's as far as they will look into it. They are taking the seller's word. Please confirm whether License Tom is a partner and whether this product key is legitimate. Thank you.

Answer 1

this is most definitely a scam, only because I've just been caught out by it. I bought the Groupon this afternoon as I had recently wiped my PC, and as such lost my old lifetime copy of MS Office that I bought off of TNW Deals. TNW Deals is no more, and so the first result in Google was the Groupon offer, and so I didn't think it was scammy at all...and I just thought the price was the usual mega discount stuff you find on Groupon.

It felt a bit dodgy when I had to go through a weird process of mounting a vitual CD rom drive onto my PC in order to install the software, but I presumed it was because it might have been a CD key or somethign like that. The visuals that followed in the various windows were not quite the clarity I was expecting, and it felt like a photo of a photo type thing, and clearly weren't supplier produced icons and images. The software installed all okay though, and word opened all fine as well.

Fast forward a few hours, and then I start seeing emails come in stating that my Microsoft account was just accessed in the USA on iOS on Safari. None of that was me of course. That has brought me here, and I am now responding to warn others before I go ahead an wipe my PC again in order to remove any and all malware that may have been installed by me at a root level or something like that, based on my actions of mounting a drive and installing whatever exe I installed that masked itself as MS Office 2024.

Stay away from that Groupon and make sure you have 2FA on EVERYTHING!!!

Answer 2

I got this pic from a Groupon offer. It makes no sense.

The Pro Plus license is the most expensive type of Office license. Not the cheapest.

To post from Jamie, a while a volume license is "completely legit product key", it is ONLY licensed to the company that purchased it.

It is more than likely a company admin is borrowing a unused license and earning some pocket money on the side. This is considered a pirated license.

One other possibility is a school admin is selling a highly discounted student license on the side.

For subscription based licenses like Microsoft365 the owner can easily withdraw the license and you are left hanging.

Buyers beware.

Answer 3

I bought a Microsoft Office 2024 license using a Groupon that said it was being sold by a Microsoft partner. When I tried to redeem it, I was sent an email from License Tom, directing me to download Office from their site. I requested a refund, but both Groupon and License Tom refused even though I did not use the key. Groupon says the seller *says* they are a legitimate Microsoft partner and that's as far as they will look into it. They are taking the seller's word. Please confirm whether License Tom is a partner and whether this product key is legitimate. Thank you.

So, I bought the same product key from Groupon and came across your post. I did some digging and even spoke with a Microsoft team member (Mohit) directly. I had them confirm the validity of the product key I purchased as well as it's source.

Mohit stated that the product key I provided was part of a volume licensing purchase. for those who don't know, a volume key is a key used to run the same license on multiple devices. These type of licenses are used by companies to run multiple activations of the product. The original purchaser does not have access to anything related to your product, machine or files, it is essentially one license and many keys and everyone get their own license.

He confirmed they are 100% legit product keys but if you have any concerns, you can share your license directly with the Microsoft volume support team.

I hope that helps!

Answer 4

Maybe I was being naive, but I had purchased previous license keys like this before, legally. A previous job offered it as a perk, it was a professional key that was extremely discounted (like $10) and it was completely legit. Granted, this was over 10 years ago, but it was through how they got licenses for the work PCs. They allowed us to get up to 2 for ourselves.

I bought the License Tom groupon thinking that this was a volume licensing discount situation like above. So yeah, I did think it was legit.

Answer 5

Seller sent this as proof: https://appsource.microsoft.com/en-US/marketplace/partner-dir/4a90100c-2e7f-4eed-900d-9501bb1cd83e/overview

It looks like this may mean it just markets products through Microsoft. Microsoft did not confirm or deny, just responded with links to the company's generic online FAQs, which was a waste of time. Groupon marketing was deceptive so now I have to spend time fixing this.