Russell Brown Profile picture
Journalist, rider of bikes, cooker of food, dad-DJ, seeker of joy. @publicaddress.bsky.social https://t.co/vvQNGvH9eX

Sep 13, 2020, 5 tweets

Tried to restore Microsoft Office after a hard drive failure (had the product key) and find myself forced to move to Office 365. Sucks. But I can't use the applications until I create an account, which Microsoft won't let me do because it says it has one under my email address.

Oh, okay, maybe I *did* have one. Ask for a restore code, which it turns out is for someone with a similar name (another Russell B). It rejects my real address then eventually asks me if I still want to create one with my real email address, then fails to do that. Repeatedly.

Absolute security shocker, Microsoft, and a deeply shitty customer experience. I've emailed the *other* Russell B (in California) in case he's getting alerts about login attempts. What a debacle.

It gets better! Microsoft NZ's 0800 helpline basically says "piss off with your login problems" and tells me to go to account.live.com. All I can find there is an AI assistant who asks me to "describe your problem". Where to even start?

The worst part is that I could guess enough of the other Russell's account address to have reset his password and logged in on his account! Holy shit!

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