[oshout]

I wonder if he purchased the license through a vendor which supports o365, or from Microsoft directly.

It sounds like he's the sole user on an o365 account. I wonder if his account was compromised leading to the loss of access. Seems kind of negligent on his behalf if he's the sole (admin) user. If his company has compliance requirements, meeting them would have likely addressed this issue.

Quick temporary fix would be to change public-facing DNS records: MX and likely (hopefully) SPF & DKIM, pointing them to a different mail host. At least that way he could get his email.

[donmcronald]

It’s pretty easy to blame the user, but Microsoft guides users into some terrible decisions, especially for small businesses. My biggest complaint is how they encourage using a day-to-day account (ex: [e-mail]) as a global admin. That’s a massive risk for small businesses.

I always set us dedicated, unlicensed admin accounts for small businesses. Having a dedicated admin account should be a top priority, but MS keeps streamlining the process of making the first user a global admin.

I wouldn’t want to change my mail provider in this situation. It would be disruptive and splitting mail between two systems creates a mess that’s a pain to clean up.

I hope this guy wins and I hope a regulator brings the hammer down on Microsoft if he’s relying on them to meet his data retention obligations.

[aussiedude]

You'll be surprised that non-technical users will just keep trying with the vendor until fixed.

They won't help themselves and just switch and wait for the other provider to fix.