tI have a twist on this same insane activation process. Being an IT reseller also, I likewise purchase Office products for my clients. As of last week, I had registered 9 different copies of Office 2013 Home & Business to my MS Live account.
One of my users was having issues with Office, so I reinstalled. I even clicked the small link on the activation screen to use a Product Key instead of my Live account. I entered the correct product key, then was prompted that I had to login to my Live
account anyway. When I did, I was prompted to pick which one of the 9 accounts was the one for this computer. There is no way to tell, as all of the labels are the same, something like:
Microsoft Office 2013 Home & Business
Microsoft Office 2013 Home & Business
Microsoft Office 2013 Home & Business
Microsoft Office 2013 Home & Business
Microsoft Office 2013 Home & Business
Microsoft Office 2013 Home & Business
Microsoft Office 2013 Home & Business
Microsoft Office 2013 Home & Business
Microsoft Office 2013 Home & Business
A call to support essentially yielded "Sorry, you should have used a separate account for each purchase." As others have stated, I provide this as a service for my clients. To create a Live account for them, or ask them for their existing Live account
is ludicrous. Creating an account, among other things, prompts you for your birthday. Do you think I'm going to ask my customer what their birthday is? If I sell 6 copies of Office 2013 H&B to one client, do I have to get 6 different email addresses there?
How insane! I am HIGHLY mad at Microsoft for this lunacy! Their excuse is that this allows the customer to activate their product if they forget or lose their Product Key. Shouldn't that be an option, not a requirement? I suspect that this is for anti-piracy
more than anything else.