Is microsoftstore.com Safe?

When building a system I was going to put 8.1 along with other operating systems and it turned into a real nightmare. They wont give the student discount anywhere if you want a disc. For someone in my situation with a bad connection downloading an OS isn't such a great idea. Then when I contacted them they insisted that I create an account with them. When I learned more about 8 it is clear that much of the excessive branding is designed to make it easier for them to spy on us. I told the rep that I would just create a bogus account and then delete it. I went to the account page and it was broken. The rep insisted that since it worked on her end it had to be "your system, did you type in the correct address... there is nothing wrong here, it must be your fault..." She then had the nerve to ask for my mail address so she could send me the link. I was furious. I informed her that I am lauching a .com and I teach tech. I know how to enter in an address. I gave her a disposable address and of course the mail never arrived. They couldn't even send out a simple mail. After more and more wrangling I just went online and bought a 8.1 disc. For what my time is worth saving a few bucks was becoming too expensive. I wont even get into the nonsense about how many different versions there are of it and the relative (de)merits of them. What is really galling about the whole ordeal is I despise 8 and I am only installing it so I can put together a package that completely removes the 8 nonsense and makes it look and function just like 7 again- along with shutting down tons of the spying avenues. Their mistakes are going to be very good for my business. Thank you! All-in-all the student discount is such a hassle that in all reality it is darn-near a fraud. The red rating is earned through the spying, the nightmare of getting a student discount and the general incompetence.

I have been trying for three months to add some free games to my windows 8 pro install - Every time I try to login, my pw is not recognized. Then I get another screen with a Captcha box that doesn't like anything I do. I don't have a LIVE account and never will - I just want those games from my former Win 7 Pro install that were deleted by the Win 8 Pro upgrade.