There are always horrifying consumer stories over at The Consumerist and today's is no exception. Bill, an IT Manager for a University, tried to purchase an upgrade license for Vista Ultimate on the Windows Live Marketplace, but after entering his payment details he was presented with the message: "Microsoft cannot be contacted at this time...Please try again later".

Needing his licence rather urgently, Bill submitted his information again later as requested, 7 times until the transaction finally went through. The following morning though, Bill got a nasty surprise.

"I received a call from the fraud prevention department at my bank stating I had been charged by Microsoft 7 times at $233.15!"

It gets better. For the past 2 weeks Bill has been trying to get Microsoft to fix the mistake, but all he seems to get is low level tech support morons telling him "sorry sir your issue has been escalated to our product development team and you should get a call back today or tomorrow". They never did call Bill back despite calling Microsoft every day.

"I am really irritated and have asked numerous times for a number or email address to "Product Development" and they keep telling me they don't even have that information and that the system they use doesn't even tell the support person I am speaking with that contact information. WHAT KIND OF SYSTEM IS THIS?"

Now Bill has this large hole in his account, things aren't looking too good for him:

"I now have overdue bills and am going hungry for what would appear to be the rest of the month.... I suppose this is what I get for trying to do things legitimately with Microsoft... A big smack in the face."

Full story over at The Consumerist.