Tell HN: MS365 upgrade silently to 25 licenses, tried to charge me $1,035
Hey guys, quick warning about a crazy MS 365 dark pattern I ran into last night.
I was testing the business basic plan for a side project. Decided to upgrade to the annual tier to get the discount ($3.45/mo). Clicked convert to paid, put my burner card in, and got a $0.00 confirmation email. Thought we were good.
Woke up today to my bank blocking a charge for exactly $1,035.00.
Turns out when you hit the annual upgrade, Microsoft silently defaults the quantity dropdown to 25 licenses. No warning prompt at all. (25 seats x 12 months x $3.45 = $1,035). They send the zero-dollar invoice to make you think it's an auth hold, then try to drain your card while you sleep.
The best part? When I went to their support chat to ask why my billing was so high, the system conveniently gave me a "System error, try again later" message. You can't even get help.
Luckily I used a virtual corporate card with a strict limit for this test, otherwise my bootstrapped project would be out a grand today. Watch out for that hidden quantity field guys.
11 comments
> There was no clear pop-up, no "Are you sure you want to
You haven't learned MSFT's m.o. yet... this kind of pop-up only shows up when you're absolutely certain about something, like removing files. In those cases they ask for confirmation endlessly and needlessly.
When they're trying to collect money, they go ahead and quickly guess with all the defaults as they see fit. I'm surprised the default isn't 1000 seats tbh. After all, you're certain to be a huge success now that you've chosen them as a vendor.
;-)
You haven't learned MSFT's m.o. yet... this kind of pop-up only shows up when you're absolutely certain about something, like removing files. In those cases they ask for confirmation endlessly and needlessly.
When they're trying to collect money, they go ahead and quickly guess with all the defaults as they see fit. I'm surprised the default isn't 1000 seats tbh. After all, you're certain to be a huge success now that you've chosen them as a vendor.
;-)
Haha, fair point. Honestly I should be thanking them for believing my side project will magically hit 25 employees overnight!
But yeah, the contrast is wild. Try to delete an empty text file? "ARE YOU ABSOLUTELY SURE?". Try to upgrade a $3 billing plan? "Let me just casually attempt to charge you $1k while you blink
But yeah, the contrast is wild. Try to delete an empty text file? "ARE YOU ABSOLUTELY SURE?". Try to upgrade a $3 billing plan? "Let me just casually attempt to charge you $1k while you blink
What you described is true, I also experienced this same:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46258982
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46258982
> When I went to their support chat to ask why my billing was so high, the system conveniently gave me a "System error, try again later" message. You can't even get help.
New to Microsoft ? You get more help from someone in the street than from Microsoft.
Did you read the TOS before buying ? Microsoft has very good lawyers.
New to Microsoft ? You get more help from someone in the street than from Microsoft.
Did you read the TOS before buying ? Microsoft has very good lawyers.
This is why I use LibreOffice instead of Microsoft365.
I love LibreOffice for documents, but in this case I was specifically trying to set up custom domain email routing (Exchange) for my project. Sadly LibreOffice can't host my MX records haha. If only setting up decent email deliverability was as easy as installing an open-source word processor.
I've been using Fastmail for years now to host emails for my domains. Works like a charm. Maybe worth for you too.
recently i was helping a a friend purchase a custom domain, and signup to a email service; even though i use fastmail, i was surprised to find proton was like 3eur per month (fastmail is 5eur). when my renewal expires, i will probably switch to proton - for 10eur the features are really good;