Outlook Went Down? Microsoft May Owe You Money

Business users affected by Microsoft's recent global service outage may be eligible for compensation under the company's Service Level Agreement. While individual users with personal plans like Microsoft 365 Family are not guaranteed compensation, business customers with subscriptions to Microsoft 365 Business plans, Exchange Online, or Teams Premium have stronger legal footing to request refunds or credits.

Service Level Agreements Apply to All Business Users

Service Level Agreements, or SLAs, are contractual promises that guarantee certain levels of service availability. Microsoft's SLAs promise 99.9 percent uptime or higher for its business services. If the company fails to meet these promises, customers are entitled to compensation. Importantly, these SLAs apply to all business account holders, regardless of company size.

Calculating Your Compensation

Downtime is calculated as "Any period of time when users are unable to send or receive email with Outlook Web Access." The uptime percentage is determined by subtracting downtime minutes from total user minutes, then dividing by total user minutes and multiplying by 100. For the recent 18-hour outage, this would result in approximately 97.5 percent uptime, qualifying for 50 percent service credit.

How to File a Claim

To file a claim, business customers must submit detailed information about the incident to Microsoft customer support, including description of the incident, time and duration of downtime, affected resource names, number and location of affected users, and error codes. For the recent outage, include the codes: Exchange (EX1550543), Outlook (MO1550821), and Teams (TM1550488).

Claims can be filed through the Microsoft 365 Admin Center by clicking the headset icon in the bottom right corner, navigating to "Help & support," and selecting "Contact support" then "Email." Claims must be submitted by December 31, 2026, to be considered for the November 12 incident.