Member Avatar for D4Stone

I want to buy MS Office 2007 or 2010 Professional and I can find it on Ebay at an average price of $175 US. I am wondering if there is some reason I am not aware of to not buy any of these programs. What do I need to know to make an informed decision?

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Short answer: buying Office 2007 or 2010 on eBay is often more trouble than it’s worth. Many low‑price listings are “product key only,” OEM/system‑builder keys (tied to the original PC), volume/MSDN/TechNet keys that are not meant for resale, or outright counterfeits. Also note that Office 2007 and Office 2010 are out of Microsoft support (no security updates), which makes buying older copies a security risk today. (learn.microsoft.com)

Practical checklist (what to demand before buying):

  • A sealed retail (FPP) box or clear photos of the genuine Certificate of Authenticity (COA)/hologram — avoid listings that only show a 25‑char code. (microsoft.com)
  • Explicit statement in the listing that the SKU is a transferable retail/license (not OEM, not volume/ProPlus‑VL). Ask which SKU/channel it is. (learn.microsoft.com)
  • Solid return policy, recent seller history, and payment method protections (PayPal/credit card). No returns + key only = high risk.

If a key has already been bought or fails to activate: try the official activation troubleshooting/phone activation path; contact the seller and then the payment provider for a refund; report suspected counterfeit to Microsoft via the “How to Tell / Counterfeit Report” process (Microsoft may investigate and, in qualifying cases, supply a replacement). (learn.microsoft.com)

Better options today: buy from Microsoft or an authorized retailer, or use a currently supported one‑time Office (Microsoft’s retail offers) or Microsoft 365 subscription — both are safer and give updates and support. For a free alternative, LibreOffice/OpenOffice remain viable for most documents. (microsoft.com)

Notes: this expands on ’s “too good to be true” and echoes ’s experience with download‑only/one‑time keys; ’s suggestion of OpenOffice is still a practical alternative.

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Member Avatar for Ancient Dragon

Get OpenOffice -- it is free and compatible with M$ Office.

Member Avatar for happygeek

Generally speaking, buying on eBay is the same as buying anywhere else if what you are concerned about is getting a genuine product: if the price seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Member Avatar for ksharp25

Make sure too that would would infact be purchasing physical disc medium to install. Way too many Microsoft products being sold on EBay end up being nothing more than a generic OEM volume license key they send you with a link to Digital River or some other online source to download your product and install. No disk. Problem? Yes. If you ever re-format and re-insall, that "product key" you bought was a once and done deal for installation and is not a true product key that can be used again. Even if you (as I did) burned the downloaded .ISO to a DVD and kept it. I got an exclusive "Student deal" on Windows 7 for $70.00. Thought it was too good to be true, but it worked. Only to find out my legitimately legal student price deal I bought online was a once-and-done product key/download.

Now I did after making a few calls to India and some noise, get them to re-issue me a new Product Key that is full retail key (meaning install as much as I need on upgrades/reformat-reinstalls). But it was a huge hassle. All because of one online deal that was cheap.

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