MS botches Office 2010 prices, hikes Professional by £30

Microsoft got its sums wrong on the price tag for the boxed version of Office Professional 2010, forcing it to hike the product by £30.

The company revealed UK prices for its Office 2010 editions yesterday, but mistakenly priced the off-the-shelf Professional version to retail at £399.99.

"Following the announcement on UK pricing for Office 2010 this morning, we wanted to flag that the price of £399.99 quoted for the boxed version of Office Professional 2010 is incorrect; the price should actually read as £429.99," a Microsoft spokesman told us late on Wednesday.

"All other prices quoted are correct. Our apologies for any confusion or inconvenience that this oversight may have caused."

The software vendor revealed US prices in January, and at the same time confirmed that customers who bought Office 2010 pre-installed by OEMs rather than purchasing an off-the-shelf copy stood to save a few bucks to boot.

Unfortunately, the UK prices aren't as pretty as those set for customers on the other side of the pond.

So Microsoft's failure to spot an error in its pricing for Office 2010 won't exactly help matters among Blighty folk who will grumble about the unfavourable exchange rate as well as Redmond's bad sums. Let's just hope the company didn't use Excel when compiling its price list. ®