Contact Microsoft’s billing support from your own working account to investigate the continuing charges and available cancellation options; billing staff can help with billing, but they cannot bypass the identity checks protecting your wife’s account.
Reach a human about the payments
- Open Microsoft’s billing contact page.
- Sign in with your own working Microsoft account, not the locked account.
- Select Microsoft 365 and Office → Subscription, account, billing.
- Choose Contact Support. Chat or callback will appear if available for your issue and region. Microsoft identifies account and billing questions as eligible for technical-support routing, which may include chat.^1^
- Explain clearly:
- Your wife cannot access the account that owns the subscription.
- Payments continue from a card or payment method you control.
- Account recovery has already been attempted for months.
- You are requesting a billing investigation and cancellation of future renewal, not an identity-verification override.
Have the charge dates, amounts, payment-card last four digits, and any Microsoft receipts available. These may help locate the payment, but they do not guarantee that an agent can cancel a subscription registered to another person.
Stop each type of payment separately
If you purchased her Microsoft 365 subscription from your account:
Open Services & subscriptions, find the subscription, and select Manage → Cancel. If it displays Turn on recurring billing, renewal is already disabled and the subscription will expire on the displayed date.[^2^](https://support.microsoft.com/accounts-billing/subscriptions/[Subscription ID] "Unable to cancel your Microsoft subscription | Microsoft Support")
If Microsoft billed the locked account directly:
Use the human billing route above. Do not assume that being the cardholder gives access to the account; ask the agent what cancellation or payment-blocking process is available after they locate the charge.
If the subscription was bought through Apple, Google Play, Amazon, Best Buy, or another retailer:
Cancel through that seller. Microsoft cannot cancel or change recurring billing for a subscription purchased from a third party, and refund requests must also go to that retailer.[^3^](https://support.microsoft.com/accounts-billing/subscriptions/[Subscription ID] "Manage your Microsoft 365 subscription purchased through a third party | Microsoft Support")
If it was purchased in Germany:
Microsoft provides a cancellation process that does not require signing in: https://aka.ms/germancancel. You will need purchase information to use it.[^2^](https://support.microsoft.com/accounts-billing/subscriptions/[Subscription ID] "Unable to cancel your Microsoft subscription | Microsoft Support")
For unrelated third-party services linked to her email or card:
Microsoft cannot cancel those. Contact each service’s billing department directly. If a charge cannot be matched to an expected subscription, Microsoft’s payment investigation page is intended for identifying unexplained Microsoft charges.^4^
About recovering the locked account
There are human support employees, but personal-account support agents are expressly prohibited from changing account details or issuing access merely after a failed recovery request.^1^ That is why reaching a person does not necessarily produce a manual unlock.
A different process applies only if the sign-in screen explicitly says the account is locked and provides a link beginning with aka.ms/. Submit that account reinstatement form; Microsoft says an Online Safety support agent reviews it and replies by email. Do not submit duplicates while it is under review, because that can delay the response.^5^
If this is instead an ordinary failed ownership-recovery case, Microsoft permits up to two recovery attempts per day, but support agents cannot override the result.^6^ Since that route has already consumed months, handle the billing cancellation independently rather than waiting for account recovery before stopping renewal.
References
- Contact Microsoft customer support | Microsoft Support
- [Unable to cancel your Microsoft subscription | Microsoft Support](https://support.microsoft.com/accounts-billing/subscriptions/[Subscription ID])
- [Manage your Microsoft 365 subscription purchased through a third party | Microsoft Support](https://support.microsoft.com/accounts-billing/subscriptions/[Subscription ID])
- How to investigate a billing charge from Microsoft | Microsoft Support
- Microsoft account has been locked | Microsoft Support
- Account recovery unsuccessful | Microsoft Support