Carlos,
Let me share something that may be pertinent to this case, as well as some others that I believe have the same problem as you with the key being already used.
Microsoft has most likely instituted this new policy of linking a product key to a Microsoft account because of the enormous piracy problem. However, in their planning, I believe they have forgotten something.
Dell used to ship all their PCs with the Windows product keys on the Certificate of Authenticity (CoA) on the top of the PCs. I was told by someone at Dell that they no longer have the product key on the Dell PC because shipments of PCs were being opened,
the product keys written down, and the PCs then shipped forward as if nothing had happened. Those license keys were then illegitimately being used on other systems. So, now Dell ships the PCs with no product key. If you try to install Windows on them, the
Windows Installer looks at the credentials inside the BIOS chip and sees that it is a legitimate Dell PC and allows the installation.
However, Dell still ships the MS Office product key cards along with the shipments of the PCs. The boxes can still be opened, the product key written down, the boxes resealed, and then shipped as if nothing had happened. Then, when the end user tries to
register his legitimate copy of Office, he is told the product key has already been used. That is because the thief or the person he sold it to registered it already.
In fact, I recently purchased a PC for a customer of mine with Office 2016. The laptop arrive WITHOUT the keycard. I called Dell multiple times to get this resolved and my business customer who urgently needed Office was forced to wait for Dell to respond.
Of course it took me hours to resolve this issue, for which I was not paid. It could be the original product key card was stolen and used somewhere else.
All this is only a theory. However, it would explain why we see so many people with the "already been used" problem.
How could vendors like Dell work with MS to solve this problem? This is my idea: First, they do NOT ship the product key card any longer. Instead, they set up a system where legitimate purchasers of Office are sent an email telling them where to go to
access their product key. They can also log into their Dell account (or HP, Lenovo, etc) and access their purchase that also has the same link to the product key. Whatever the case, the product key is displayed for the account that purchased the Dell PC.
Please note that I am NOT saying the product key is forever linked to a Dell reseller, but it is always allowed to be DISPLAYED to the reseller (or end user) who purchased it. The purchaser would log in to their Dell account (reseller or end user), get the
product key in a downloadable PDF document, print the PDF document (for the reseller to pass on to the customer or the end user to keep in a safe place), and then they can activate Office. Microsoft does this same type thing for obtaining product keys through
their Refurbisher program as well as for their Action Pack subscribers. It is effective and safe.
Please click Helpful if you think this would be helpful.
![](data:image/svg+xml, %3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' height='64' class='font-weight-bold' style='font: 600 30.11764705882353px "SegoeUI", Arial' width='64'%3E%3Ccircle fill='hsl(128, 8%, 22%)' cx='32' cy='32' r='32' /%3E%3Ctext x='50%25' y='55%25' dominant-baseline='middle' text-anchor='middle' fill='%23FFF' %3EA%3C/text%3E%3C/svg%3E)
