Microsoft Owes You Cash for Downtime!

Microsoft business customers may be eligible for service credits due to recent disruptions affecting services like Outlook and Teams. These credits are governed by Service Level Agreements (SLAs) tied to subscriptions such as Microsoft 365 Business plans and Exchange. While the exact compensation depends on the duration and scope of the outage, business users can claim credits if availability falls below promised levels, such as 99.9 percent.

It is important for business users to know that these refunds or service credits are not issued automatically. Customers must actively submit a claim to Microsoft customer support with detailed information about the incident, including affected resources, user numbers, and downtime duration. Specific outage codes for services like Exchange and Outlook may be required. The deadline to file a claim is the end of the month following the outage incident.

Individuals with personal Microsoft plans, such as Microsoft 365 Family, are generally not covered by SLAs and are therefore ineligible for compensation. While they might request a refund at Microsoft's discretion, no specific uptime promises are made for these consumer accounts. Business users should consult their specific SLA documentation and navigate the customer support channels to initiate their claim process.