Thanks Dave for your reply. I will check the disks to see if the Holograms appear to be genuine, but please remember that my product key has been verified as genuine, so I reckon there should be no excuse for it not working on that Microsoft site. By the way, here is the exact error message I got when trying to use my product key:
"The product key you entered appears to be for software pre-installed by the device manufacturer.
Please contact the device manufacturer for software recovery options."
So I'm not real sure what that is all about, but it sounds like someone has used my product key before to activate their system!
This second hand computer I'm using has had both an Acronis and a Todo backup of the entire hard drive made with the files stored on both a Flash Drive and an external Hard Drive. I suspect though that the Windows 7 Ultimate operating system on it was obtained from a bogus source. That is the main reason I wanted to purchase the genuine disks from Microsoft. However, as you say, I might have actually purchased a very professional imitation replica!
Well if I can't contact Microsoft by email, I guess I'll just have to try by phone again and be a bit more aggressive next time.