If you notice any unknown billing charges against you by MSbill.info (Microsoft) or bill.ms.net in your monthly bank e-statement or any other payment, you can investigate it. The given post provides instructions on how to inquire about a billing charge from Microsoft or MSbill.info.
Investigate a billing charge from Microsoft or MSbill.info
There are many instances where we notice that a charge has been declined due to insufficient funds, an expired card, or changes made to the billing information. So, Microsoft bills the account again after a few days. If you are sure that you have been charged unfairly, you can investigate the billing info as follows:
- Check your Order History
- Check Purchase History
- Manage Payment options.
1] Check your Order History
The stuff you buy/purchase, or subscriptions you pay for, always show up your Order History. So go to this page and sign in with your Microsoft account. If you are using more than one Microsoft account, sign in to each one to check your order history.
Compare your account with the charge in question. The unexpected charge may be for a subscription or a mistaken purchase by someone in your family. This mainly happens when you allow family members to share a device with your account. So, they may purchase something without saying so at the time. To verify this,
Go to your Family group and sign in with your Microsoft account. Find the name of the family member whose purchases you’d like to see.
Select ‘More options‘ > ‘Spending’, then, for recent purchases, scroll down to ‘Purchase history‘.
If you would like to check more than 90 days of purchase history, ask your family member to sign in to your family group.
Next, go to ‘Payment & billing’ and choose ‘Order history’ option.
To help avoid unexpected charges from family members or others, prevent accidental or unauthorized purchases from the Microsoft Store by requiring a password for any purchase. See this post for instructions in detail.
2] Managing Payment options
If you suspect that someone has obtained your payment information, contact your payment provider immediately to prevent further charges. Additionally, update your payment option information in your Microsoft account. Go to ‘Payment options’.
Here, remove debit or credit card information.
You can also investigate if you were charged unnecessarily by, checking whether:
- If you have made a purchase from Microsoft with a new credit card, a small authorization hold is often placed to verify billing info. These charges are reversed, however. So, no need to worry about it.
- If you have recurring bills for a free trial subscription but fail to cancel it in time. As such, you are automatically enrolled in a paid subscription and are thus charged for it. To check if you have a subscription with recurring billing, Sign in to Services & subscriptions. Additionally, if you have multiple Microsoft accounts, sign in to each one to review your subscriptions and identify any with recurring billing.
- you make multiple purchases from Microsoft Store but spread it over a few days, Microsoft bills all those purchases as one charge. To verify this, you can check your Order History.
- Orders that include multiple items are sometimes split into different shipments and billed on ‘per shipment’ basis. this is especially seen with items that are pre-orders, items that are on backorder, or orders that come from different locations. So, when an item is out of stock, shipping gets delayed and so does the billing with it. You can verify this, by checking your Order history and comparing it with the statement to find out how your order might have been split as different billings. Also, check if the shipping dates are different for each item.
- Microsoft mostly does not charge pre-orders for physical items until they ship. However, your payment provider may place a hold on your payment for a small amount or up to the full amount of your purchase. These, however, are usually reversed before the item ships.
How do I contact Microsoft about a billing issue?
To contact Microsoft about a billing issue, log in to your Office account first and click the ‘Get help now‘ option. Before doing so, make sure that you already have a subscription. Also, you must use the same account that you are facing issues with.
How do I contact Microsoft for unauthorized purchases?
To contact Microsoft regarding unauthorized purchases, open the billing section of your account. For that, you need to log in to your Office account and find the Billing panel. Here, you can find an option called ‘Get Help Now.’ You need to make use of this option to contact Microsoft.
