There's an interesting story up at The Consumerist at the moment about some chap called Bill who has been charged $1632 for a single Windows Vista Ultimate upgrade license. It would appear what has happened is that Windows Live Marketplace kept saying to try again later when Bill pressed the submit button for his upgrade license purchase, when what it should have said was we have just debited your bank account $233.15 so whatever you do don't keep pressing that button.

Unfortunately for Bill, that's exactly what he did. Another six times in fact.

Bill insists that "upon selecting "submit" from their site I was immediately taken to a page stating "Microsoft cannot be contacted at this time" or similar, "Please try again later." So needing a license for Vista right away I re-submitted it and, again, got the same thing "Microsoft cannot be contacted at this time, please try again." After 6 attempts, finally, the 7th attempt was successful and I was able to purchase a copy of Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate Upgrade" and "I thought all was well until the following morning... I received a call from the fraud prevention department at my bank stating I had been charged by Microsoft 7 times at $233.15."

Worse yet, it appears he was buying the wrong license anyway!

Microsoft has, according to The Consumerist, refunded 4 of the purchase charges but 3 remain outstanding. Which leaves Bill $466.30 out of pocket by my calculations. Two weeks on and he is still getting the runaround. As Egan Orion, writing at The Inquirer says, "Microsoft, winning hearts and minds one at a time."