Microsoft not Honouring Sale Guarantee!?

Hereafter is a report from Mark about having problem to get Microsoft upgrading his Office 2004 to Office 2008 accordingly to the advertising campaign running end of last year. We would be interested to know if this is an isolated unlucky story, or a rather spread issue faced by many Mac users.

Attracted by the offer of a nearly free upgrade to Office2008 I bought Office2004 S&T while in the USA last November. I'm now back in Germany, but when I sent in my data to Microsoft for the upgrade they refused and said:
"Da das Office Mac 2004 in den USA erworben wurde, ist eine Teilnahme an der Tech guarantee nicht möglich. Bitte wenden Sie sich an den US Support von Microsoft."
To translate: "As Office 2004 has been bought in the USA you can't participate in the tech guarantee program. Please contact Microsoft's US support."
Nowhere in the tech guarantee is written that it is country specific - they even offer it in a variety of languages (German, English, and French).

So if you are experiencing a similar weird behavior from Microsoft regarding this promotion on Mac Office 2008 we would like to hear about it.