Microsoft’s email outage could knock half or even all of a month’s fee off your business bill, but you have to ask for the credit by Dec. 31

Businesses that lost Outlook email in this week’s Microsoft 365 outage may be owed a credit of up to a full month’s fee for the service, but only if they file a claim with Microsoft by Dec. 31, according to Microsoft’s service-level agreement, its written uptime promise to business customers.  Microsoft said at 10:09 p.m. Pacific time Friday that it had restored service to the remaining affected customers.  Problems began around midday Thursday, the Associated Press reported.

What it means for you

For Exchange Online, the email service in Microsoft 365 business plans, Microsoft counts time when users “are unable to send or receive email with Outlook Web Access.”  If email was available less than 99.9% of the month, the credit is 25% of that service’s monthly fee; below 99%, 50%; below 95%, 100%.  In a 30-day month, that means more than about 43 minutes of downtime, more than about 7 hours, or more than 36 hours, if all your users were affected.  Downtime is counted per affected user, so a partial outage counts less.

Credits aren’t automatic.  Microsoft says to send customer support a description of the incident, when and how long you were down, affected account names, the number and location of affected users, and the errors you saw.  Wired reported that administrators can file from the Microsoft 365 admin center’s Help & support page and suggested citing Microsoft’s incident numbers EX1550543, MO1550821 and TM1550488.  Claims must arrive by the end of the month after the outage, Microsoft’s agreement says, and Microsoft says it typically processes claims within 45 days.

Personal and family plans aren’t covered.  Microsoft’s consumer terms leave refunds to its discretion, Wired reported.

What happened

Microsoft said the outage, which hit Outlook, Teams and other Microsoft 365 apps in dozens of countries, came from an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade and was not a cyberattack, AP reported.  More than 430 million people use Microsoft 365 apps, according to Microsoft.

Source:  Microsoft Online Services service-level agreement (October 2026 edition); Microsoft 365 Status on X, Nov. 13, 2026; Associated Press via Tech Xplore, Nov. 14, 2026; Wired, Nov. 14, 2026.