Microsoft Outlook outage November 12, 2026: Business customers can claim service credits — up to 50% of their monthly bill, under Microsoft’s SLA. Personal users get nothing. No automatic refunds. No cash.
Just credits, if you file correctly, and only if you’re on a business plan. That’s the takeaway from Wired’s reporting on the global Microsoft 365 outage that hit Outlook, Exchange Online, and Teams for roughly 18 hours on November 12. The incident triggered Microsoft’s Service Level Agreement, but only for business and enterprise subscribers.
Individual plans like Microsoft 365 Family or Personal are excluded. Their terms grant Microsoft “sole discretion” over refunds. No uptime guarantee. No SLA.
No payout. Business users, however, are covered. Microsoft promises 99.9% uptime for Exchange Online and Outlook Web Access. Downtime is measured in user-minutes: total affected users × minutes offline.
An 18-hour outage across a full billing cycle drops uptime to ~97.5%. That qualifies for a 50% service credit, not a cash refund, against the portion of your bill tied to the affected services. Example: A solo freelancer paying $24.88/month for Exchange Online and Microsoft 365 Business Standard is owed $12.44.
A company with 100 users on the same plan would be owed over $1,000, assuming identical per-user pricing and full impact. To claim it, you must file manually. Microsoft does not auto-issue credits. You’ll need: the outage codes (EX1550543 for Exchange, MO1550821 for Outlook, TM1550488 for Teams), your affected resource names (e.g., “Exchange Online (Plan 1)”), number of impacted users, and locations.
All this goes into a support request via the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, not the main portal, but buried under the headset icon in the bottom-right corner, then the top-right headset again inside Help & Support. The SLA document runs 53,000 words. Microsoft doesn’t simplify it. It doesn’t email reminders.
It doesn’t flag eligible accounts. You find it, calculate it, and file, or forfeit it. This isn’t theoretical. Wired confirmed the math and filed its own claim.
The process is live. The credits are real. They’re just not easy to get. Microsoft has not announced any change to the SLA, no easing of the filing requirements, and no extension of coverage to personal users.
The next step belongs to businesses: log in, dig up last month’s bill, count your users, and submit, before the clock runs out on the claim window.
TBFiled by The Tech Business Desk
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