Install Office 2016 OEM without Live account

Whats worse is you cannot create one single account for a customer then expect to be able to manage the Licenses under one account.

    First of all it doesn't work, the site has no way to differentiate the licenses or know what machine it as installed on. So when you try and activate all you see is a bunch of the same exact product names in a list no way to tell one form the other and almost impossible to pick the correct one. I am currently trying to activate 5 and no matter which one I puck they will not activate telling me the keys are activated in another account. So the process just doesn't work anyways. I have spent hours on the phone with Microsoft, Who do I charge for those hours? I have to pay my staff to waste their time on this stuff.  and forget it if you ever have to reinstall. 

Second: Their seems to be random limitations on how many licenses you can register in one account

Third: It seems the only reliable way to do this is to create an account for each and every machine. However you must be able to  receive the activation emails form Microsoft for each account. So now I have to waste time creating an group account in their email domain something like Office ******@customerstoemrsdomain.com then create emails for each machine something like ******@customersdomain.com and add that to the group. Then I fwd the group to something at my domain like ******@mydomain.com in order to receive all the activation emails.  Now I though this was a viable solution, however very time consuming, until we needed to reinstall reactivate a machine and we found all the machines Live accounts we created were deactivated by MS citing that they wee either used for spam or are against policy? WHAT?

fourth:

Theres many more reasons but my head and my hand hurts from thinking about this. I was so pissed off at the incompetency of the MS tech I was on the phone with the other day that for the first time in my 24 year IT career I was punching the desk and kicking chairs. They do not know howto fix their own problems. I was referred to "professional support" because the PC "was joined to a domain". Oh and surprise i called the number that was given and Oh they arent open right now. HMMM 

Bottom line is this is a Broken system. This is the most business, partner, OEM unfriendly system I have ever seen and it just does not work. MS is raking in the dough pushing its Monthly subscription model while leaving all of us in the dark and in the dust unable to support their products anymore. And worse it costs us all real dollars in our time and maybe even hurting relationships with our customers.

That would be an OK suggestion if that actually worked. it just doesn't their are all kinds of issue with putting multiple licenses in one account. also not an issue of the customer not wanting to provide something. The customer doesn't want to be bothered with this at all, They have businesses to run!  also the product Keys are not the issue but Keys are are different then they used to be the Key does not activate the software the link to a MS live account does and that is where the problem lies. It used to be enter the key and the product was ready to go that simple. That no longer applies. The only thing making a DVD does is give you a local installer instead of waiting for each machine to download individually. The same flawed activation process still applies. Believe me man I've done hundreds of these and tried every way possible. The system just does not work! Microsoft's own techs don't understand it and cannot fix it. I've spent dozens of hours on he phone with them.

Everything you say is true and I lived this nightmare up until a month ago.

I told our Director unless he wanted me to go crazy we need to either spend the $$$ for O365 (which is too expensive that they wouldn't do), or spend the extra $130 per Standard Volume License.  Luckily I work for just one company and that is the route we are taking.  I know many of you can't go that route and to you I say, I truly feel your pain.  The OEM system is broken and apparently Microsoft could care less.  When you cannot activate a legitimate paid copy of Office without having to spend 2 hours on a support call, uninstalling, reinstalling, guessing at keys and even Microsoft techs have no idea which one to choose....something is drastically wrong.

It left such a sour taste in my mouth that I've gone all Linux and LibreOffice on my home personal laptop.

Who do you charge this time to?  The client.  I'm calling it "The Microsoft Tax".  Clients need to understand that if they are going to insist upon using Microsoft software, then this is part of the cost of doing so.  It's not reasonable that we who are forced to deal with this nonsense should be absorbing the cost of it, especially when we are in no way responsible for the situation.

So when you are selling someone a copy of Office or whatever, just be sure to add another $100 or so to the quote and make sure that the client knows why.

I agree but then the problem is it hurts the relationship with the customer.  So unfortunate I find myself giving away that time.