Microsoft 365 Outage: You Could Be Owed a Service Credit

If your team couldn’t use email for most of this outage, you could fall into the 50% band, or higher if the outage passes 36 hours. Microsoft works out the final figure from how many of your users were affected and for how long.

Before you claim, it helps to know:

• Credits aren’t automatic. You, or your IT partner, need to ask for one and show that you were affected.
• Only the affected service counts. If only Exchange Online failed, the credit applies to the Exchange part of your plan, not the whole bundle.
• Only paid subscriptions qualify. Free and trial licences don’t.
• It’s a credit, not a refund. It comes off a future bill.
• There’s a deadline. If you bought your licences through a Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) partner, Microsoft must receive the claim within one month of the end of the billing month the outage happened in. For this outage, that’s 31 December 2026.

Spectrum IT Clients: We’ll Handle Your Claim

If we manage your Microsoft 365 licences, we are already preparing your claim. All we need from you is one email.

1. Reply to our email. We are writing to every affected client with the exact wording Microsoft needs.
2. Send it from your work email address. Microsoft only accepts confirmation from your organisation’s own domain, not a personal Gmail or Hotmail account.
3. Tell us roughly how many people were affected, and for how long if you know. Mention any missed emails, failed Teams meetings or support tickets you raised with us.
4. We’ll do the rest. We’ll put together the evidence and send the claim to Microsoft, with your tenant ID and Microsoft’s incident numbers.
5. We’ll pass the credit on to you. Once Microsoft approves your claim, the credit will show on a future invoice from us.

Please reply by Friday 27 November, so we can get every claim in well before Microsoft’s 31 December deadline. Microsoft makes the final decision on each claim and on how much it credits, and we’ll keep you updated along the way.

Not a Spectrum Client? How to Claim

Who makes the claim depends on where you bought your licences.

• From an IT partner or reseller (CSP): your partner, or their distributor, submits the claim to Microsoft. Ask them to do it, and send them the confirmation described below.
• Directly from Microsoft: raise a support request in the Microsoft 365 admin center under Support > Help & support. Ask for an “SLA service credit” and quote the incident numbers.
• Through an Enterprise Agreement or other volume licensing: contact your Microsoft account team or licensing partner.

Not sure where your licences came from? Check Billing > Your products in the admin center.

What Microsoft will ask for:

1. Your tenant ID, the unique ID of your Microsoft 365 account. You’ll find it on the Overview page of the Microsoft Entra admin center.
2. The incident numbers: EX1550543 (Exchange Online) and MO1550821 (multiple services). Both are listed under Health > Service health in the admin center.
3. When you were affected, including start and end times and how many users.
4. What you did about it, such as support tickets, workarounds and messages to staff.
5. A written request for the credit, sent from your work email domain. Microsoft won’t accept one from a personal email address.

If you bought through a partner, the claim must reach Microsoft by 31 December 2026, so it’s worth starting now.

Be Ready for the Next Outage

No cloud service is perfect. This outage shows why every organisation should have a business continuity plan (BCP): an agreed, written plan for keeping essential work going when something goes wrong. Despite the name, it isn’t only for businesses: schools, trusts and charities need one just as much. An IT continuity plan is the part of it that covers your systems, data and communication. You can then act quickly and calmly instead of improvising.

For the IT side of your plan, decide:

• How you’ll communicate. Choose an alternative way to reach staff, clients and suppliers, such as a phone tree, text messaging or an approved backup channel, and make sure everyone knows what it is in advance.
• How you’ll reach your data in a longer outage. Keep independent backups of your Microsoft 365 email, OneDrive and SharePoint, so you can still get to key files and messages if an outage lasts for days.
• Which documents must stay within reach. Keep contracts, contact lists, bookings and tickets somewhere you can open without email.
• Who does what. Decide who leads the response, who updates staff and clients, and who contacts your IT partner.
• Where to check for updates. Use Service health in the admin center and @MSFT365Status on X.
• What to record. Note times, how many people were affected and any tickets raised. It makes a credit claim much easier.

A plan only works if people know it, so review it at least once a year and test it with a short practice run. If you don’t have one yet, we can help you put one together.

How Spectrum IT Can Help

We are based in Tewkesbury and support schools and multi-academy trusts, charities and small and medium businesses with proactive IT support, cyber-security and strategic consultancy. That includes keeping an eye on Microsoft 365 service health, so we spot problems early and claim SLA credits for you when Microsoft falls short. We also write IT continuity plans for all kinds of organisations, not just businesses, then help test them and keep them up to date, so your team knows exactly what to do when the next outage comes.

Want help with a claim, or with writing and testing your IT continuity plan? Get in touch and let’s book a meeting.