Office 2019 Activation mess

Tuesday April 14th:
Since our employees have limited access to the internet and Microsoft is blocked, our IT department is taking care of software activation.
We took the first (out of 6) laptop and started the activation process for Microsoft Office H&B 2019.
As usual, at first it did not work. I checked, and found 3 versions of the Office 365 App installed
on the device. One version was French, one Spanish and one English. WHO KNOWS WHY, maybe Dell
wants to create more work for our IT personnel? Three versions, but none of them the one we ordered. After removing all of the bloatware, almost 3 hours have passed.
Now, back to getting the real Office 2019. After another hour, all was good and I had a working and activated Office 2019.

3 hours spent

Wednesday April 22rd:
Laptop number two arrived next. After, again, uninstalling Office 365 bloatware, one hour passed.
But I thought that now it should all be easy. WRONG
I tried to download the correct version from Microsoft, but this time, no product key appeared on my account. I restarted the process again and again, but no luck! I thought that maybe because we bought all 6 Laptops together the product key for the first Laptop is good for all 6. So, I used it! Everything downloaded and installed great.
When it was time to activate, I got an error that this license has been used already.
I was actually not too surprised about that and started searching my Microsoft account again for more licenses, maybe they appeared now. But no luck.
I had one more try left, and that was to use phone activation, which has sometimes worked in the past.
After going through all the procedures, no luck. Error, this copy cannot be activated via telephone!
At this point I was fed up with it! I gave the Laptop back to our service department and asked them to call Dell and get that mess straightened out.

4 hours spent

Thursday, April 23th:

I got a call in the morning from one of our service technicians. He told me that he had a Dell Service technician, named John, on the phone and remotely connected to THE Laptop. They needed some help on account access. I also remoted into the Laptop and now three of us worked together to get that thing working. But that Dell Tech did not do anything different than what I did. For hours he tried to download, install and activate ……  download, install and activate    …… download, install and activate, literally 4 or 5 times. After he could not get it to work, he started blaming Microsoft. He told me to call them and get it fixed.
I told him that I did not buy the software from Microsoft, I bought it from Dell, if anyone needs to call Microsoft it is Dell, not us.
After another 4 hours of waisted time, I finally gave up. I instructed our Purchasing department to return the Laptop either for credit or to get it repaired!

4 h Service Tech

4 h IT

Monday, April 27th:

Call comes in for Laptop 3 & 4 activation. OMG, not again.
I thought maybe Laptop 2 was just a fluke and those will go ok. Well, needless to say, the same thing.

This time I decided to call Microsoft. As always, it takes some time to get a real person on the phone. After about 30 minutes I was connected to Romy from Microsoft.
We went thru all the scenarios, checking my Microsoft account, checking possible pending activations etc. He said that there are no additional codes and that I have to talk to Dell about it. I told him that Dell told me to talk to Microsoft. He said to just tell them to refund the money and buy the licenses from Microsoft; he will have me up and running in less than 5 minutes.
Back to calling Dell again! From this point on, all I got was the runaround. One time it was the wrong department, then it was not a business support, called business support they tell me it is not the correct department, called the correct department they told me they cannot help me to call 1-800-456-3355 number. That was the number I started out with about 3 hours ago. They then told me, don’t worry, here is the direct number 877-766-3355. ??????  The same number, just not tollfree?

Another 5 hours spent.