Losses due to Microsoft's failure may exceed $7 billion. Will customers get their money back?

The cost of productivity losses resulting from the outage that struck Microsoft services may approach $7 billion, according to estimates issued on Friday by Anderson Economic Group, a research institution based in the US state of Michigan.

The organization, which is known for its conservative estimates of the costs of economic disruptions, including worker strikes and tariffs, said that many of the 430 million Microsoft users reported to be affected by the outage may have only experienced inconveniences, without causing actual productivity losses.

But Patrick Anderson, the corporation's president, said that up to 26 million users may have been exposed on Thursday, and 51 million users on Friday, to disruptions to their businesses that caused actual economic losses. He added that the cost is likely to rise beyond these initial estimates.

“This is just a starting point, given the limited information we have,” Anderson told CNN on Friday. “We do not know the full scope of the crisis.”

Some companies may be able to obtain compensation through cybersecurity insurance policies to cover the costs associated with this disruption, but this will only shift the cost burden from Microsoft users to their insurance companies.

In addition, Anderson Economics estimated that Microsoft may find itself having to refund customers up to about $800 million per day, in compensation for subscription fees for services they contracted for but were unable to access.

Anderson noted that while not all customers will seek refunds, claims from customers who do could push the total cost of disruption to more than $7 billion.

It is noteworthy that this outage, which began Thursday afternoon (Eastern US time), prevented employees from accessing the Outlook email service, Teams meeting tools, and other essential tools in the modern work environment, in addition to Copilot, the company’s artificial intelligence assistant.