City and State do not match postal code - signing up for Office 365 Dev Account using MSDN / BizSpark

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SCENARIO: Looking for a new fun angle to develop on and think about Office 365. Lots going on in that space, I'd like to bring in some fresh angles. So I hop into my MSDN/Bizspark description, navigate to the My Account tab, and click on the Activate Office 365 Developer Subscription option. This in turn lands me at the Develop and publish your apps with an Office 365 Developer Subscription page - https://msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions/office365d . I then click on the Register at the Office 365 Portal link - https://msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions/office365d#. Here I am offered an option to sign up for the Microsoft Office 365 Enterprise E3 Developer (MSDN) .

From there I fill out my information. All goes well until I hit the Where will you be using Office 365? screen. I put in my city, state, and zip, but wind up with a The city and state do not match the postal code message. For the record I used St Petersburg, FL 33702. You can bing it. 33702 is a valid zip code for that area. I also try Saint Petersburg, and St. Petersburg. No good on those entries either.

So I 'chat' via the chat button in the upper to try and get the zip code issue resolved. The rep directs me to call Pre-Sales at 800-865-9408.

Pre-sales at x9408 sends me to Billing at 877-913-2707. Xfered but got dropped. Dialed them manually.

There I got Gio, who after a short ponder directed me to do the following. Which worked great by the way. Thanks gio.

First sign up for a Office 365 trial account. This will get you a user id to sign into Office 365. Use your MSDN/Bizspark associated Microsoft account to sign up for the trial.

  • Head to https://www.microsoft.com
  • Click on Software & Apps
  • Click on Office
  • Click on Office for Business
  • Click on See plans & pricing
  • Scroll down until you see the trial for Office 365 Business Premium
  • Click on Free Trial
  • Take a note of your admin id - mine wound up being similar to jhealy@devfish.onmicrosoft.com . This is your gateway to your O365 dev experience.

Now you will be good to go with activating your MSDN / Bizspark O365 developer benefit, as noted in the first paragraph above.

Raise a glass to the SEO god - Nodens, may this post help some other person not spend an hour wrestling out of an frustrating situation.