Microsoft outage: are you eligible for compensation?
Don’t expect to be paid in cash.
Image by Photo by Gary Hershorn via Getty Images
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- Eligible Microsoft customers may receive service credits, not cash refunds, after the global outage.
- Microsoft’s service agreement covers many paid business, government, education, and cloud provider customers.
- Microsoft 365 Personal and Family users are generally not covered by the business service agreement.
Key Takeaways by nexos.ai, reviewed by Cybernews staff.
Microsoft customers are reviewing the company’s policies to determine whether they qualify for additional credits following a major global outage.
As the company works to restore services and investigate the cause of the outage, some users are speculating about whether affected Microsoft customers could receive compensation.
“Microsoft owes you money for today's outage,” one Reddit user claimed.
The user noted that Microsoft's service level agreement (SLA) “allows 44 minutes of downtime per month.”
This would mean the company would provide 25% of the monthly service credit if the service was down for more than 44 minutes, and 50% if it was unavailable for more than 7 hours.
“Microsoft won't apply it automatically. You have to ask,” added the user.
Microsoft owes you money for today's outage. They won't tell you. Here's how to claim it.
by u/Own_Plane_1029 in sysadmin
The outage, which started on November 12th, disrupted Microsoft 365, Copilot, Outlook, Teams, and other services.
How does compensation work?
While the Redditor advised users to take notes on when their services went down, when they came back, and how many users were affected, this might not be the only thing they should keep in mind.
Microsoft's SLA defines the company’s commitment to guaranteed uptime, typically 99.9% or higher for its paid services.
SLA covers paid customers, making businesses, government, and educational organizations eligible. Paid customers also include Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) customers.
Nevertheless, the compensation terms may also vary depending on the service, as set out in Microsoft’s Service Level Agreement for Microsoft Online Services, dated November 1st, 2026.
For individual users, the right to compensation depends on their subscription type and the service they use.
For example, Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscriptions aren’t seen the same as Microsoft 365 business subscriptions, so the company’s SLA isn’t applied to them.
Meanwhile, users who use Microsoft services under a Microsoft 365 business subscription may be eligible for compensation if their organization files a claim.
Users should keep in mind that even when eligible for compensation, they will receive credit to use on future services rather than a monetary refund.
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Update on Microsoft outage
Some users were interested in whether anyone had previously received such compensation from Microsoft.
“Last one got a $900 credit. It took 3 months and a ton of follow-up emails, but I got the credit,” shared one user.
Many more users were interested in getting access to their service.
“Bold of you to assume that it will come back today,” wrote one Redditor.
More than 12 hours after the outage began, Microsoft said it “observed marginal success” in fixing the issue.
When it comes to what could’ve caused the outage, the company said it’s “not aware of any malicious activity causing this incident” and promised to share a post-incident report once the incident is resolved.
