Moved to Forum: The deal post was originally unpublished for issue with third party seller (Nerdused). Subsequently it is moved to the forum to preserve useful discussions from users.
I got an email from Gamespot about a Microsoft Office 2021 Lifetime License for their 2021 package. As of 10am on 23 November it says "Ending in 4 Days".
It says normal price is $39.99 - $349.99 . But it's quite a bit less than an Office 365 Subscription.
Seems a bit too good to be true. Is Gamespot a legit company?
Gamespot is (as in gamespot.com - video game reviews) but I'm having a really hard time connecting 'deals.gamespot.com' to gamespot - can't find a link to it anywhere on their website. Not yet personally convinced that this is legit.
I have very strong feeling that Gamespot domain name service has been hacked and created a fraud website under it.
1st, it is using different SSL certificate.
gamespot.com is using *.gamespot.com wildcard cert from Let's Encrypt. This looks normal
deals.gamespot.com is using stacksocial.com cert with deals.gamespot.com name added. This is normal as well, but since gamespot already has certificate above, it is a bit weird to use second certificate.
It is definitely not a 100% proof but, looking at other things sold there, and having different looking website as gamespot, and finally absurd pricing on other items just gives me that feeling that this is a 99% scam
Nah, no way this is legit. It's another StackCommerce run promo, they do these every few months. See my comment here last time this sort of deal was posted: https://www.cheapies.nz/comment/118219/redir
Good to know, it did seem like it was a huge discount.
Slickdeals (for comments)
https://slickdeals.net/f/16080199-microsoft-office-professio…
https://slickdeals.net/f/16216873-microsoft-office-professio…
Top 2 comments:
Yet another StackSocial skin.
See all the dozens of other posts promoting this grey market license key junk
karazi (537)
Can't go too wrong buying the latest Office Pro for $36….'grey market' or not, who cares? If MS wanted to stop this type of thing from happening….they would. They are making more money selling cheap licenses than keeping the price up and driving people to pirate it, and protecting their market share from FREE google office apps. Plenty of morons are still going to pay $220 on Amazon for this, so try not to lose too much sleep over the PnL impact to Microsoft from selling cheap Office keys.
Free keys?
Currently paying Microsoft $10 a month for their service to use Microsoft Office etc, mainly Word, excel and maybe publisher. Any better options for me on how I can save money instead of paying that subscription fee? Also if any one-time fee to pay to get those software (PBTech had Word and Excel for like $129)? The deal posted looks dodgy per the comments.
You could use the Home & Student 2021 suite.
Gives you Word, Excel & Powerpoint (but not publisher).
This is a one off, lifetime use for one device.
Currently $155.35 from Heathcotes
My work uses O365 and lets us sign in with our work account and download the apps onto our home machines.
Ummm this is pretty old…. theres various sites thats been selling office and windows licenses for around $40 NZD for many many years now. I personally use Kinguin
Had a quick look and $37.99 on Trade Me for MS Office Pro 2021 lifetime license from a seller with 99.7% positive feedback from 12k trades. I'd take my chances with them over some website I've never heard of. Pay with Ping and if anything doesn't work your purchase is covered by Trade Me (so they claim).
I don't know for sure of course, but I suspect the TradeMe seller is providing the same license that the OP deal on this page (StackExchange effectively) has been selling for years.
I know a few people who have bought the licenses from StackExchange, and none of them have ever had any issues. Can't guarantee that will always be the case, but I suspect that MS are deliberately turning a blind-eye and / or facilitating the process.
My theory (take with a pinch of salt!):
MS are using this as a way to segment the market and capture the maximum amount of consumer surplus they can. They leave the question of the validity of this license unanswered, which means that many of those who can afford to drop $100's pa or $500 (or whatever it costs now) for a 'Fully Packaged Product' will opt to pay the higher amount for the 'certainty' of the license being absolutely legit (and the people making the actual decision are likely not spending their own money, so they don't care as much anyway).
The people buying this (StackExchange) license will skew towards those that would never have paid hundreds no matter what. They would have either installed a pirated version, or installed something like Libre Office which is completely free (libre and gratis). Overall, by allowing this type of sale, MS get additional revenue.
MS don't care much about retail consumer sales, and haven't for many years - their target market is business, and big business especially, who will be volume licensing anyway.
Struggling to find Microsoft Office @ Gamespot deals on OzBargain. May be a sign?