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Windows Refund Day II
pbody writes "Sorry if this is rehashing an old topic, but I was looking for advice on how
to try to get a refund for the copy of XP that is coming with the laptop I
just bought when I came across this on LinuxJournal
about windowsrefund.net. They are
organizing "Windows Refund Day II" on January 23, 2003 -- which coincides
with the LinuxWorld Expo in NYC. Knowing how the first refund day turned
out, how many out there are going to the Expo and are thinking about
participating? For that matter, has anybody had any luck at all getting a refund from a vendor lately?"
But the other way around - I need to get a refund for Windows ME and get my copy of XP from Sony - you would have thought they'd make it easy for you to give them money, but no. You have to fill out a form on the web, print it out, mail it to France, ring up a wek later to check status, confirm the order by email and *then* send your payment. Do they *want* to lose customers?
sig:- (wit >= sarcasm)
Sorry if this is rehashing an old topic, but I was looking for advice on how to try to get a refund for the copy of XP that is coming with the laptop.
Sell it on E-bay to someone who wants it.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
But there's a flaw in your logic. In your situation, you still owned and were capable of using the car. Imagine you sold the car and bought a bike. You don't still have to pay car insurance, and insurers are generally required to give you a refund -- prorated for the time that the car was in your possession.
The same should also be required for Microsoft -- even if it meands removing the OS at purchase time to avoid the situation altogether.
Personally, I think it would be much easier to move to a service model -- but the cost can't come at purchase time. It has to come at activation time. If the first thing you do is reformat, there's no service charge at all.
I ran into an annoying problem similar, myself. I purchased a Compaq laptop last year, and they wouldn't let my buy it without an OS. So, I took the lowest priced option, XP Home, but never used it, just got the machine, installed linux and was happy. Last week, I ended up needing XP, but I didn't want to wipe my linux partition. The default recovery disks repartition AND reformat the drive rather than just being a copy of XP home + additional installers. So, since I had a valid activation key and license with the machine, I figured I could just install from a different XP home disk. No dice, apparently OEMs are given activation keys that only work for their installs. Both Compaq AND Microsoft said that if I wanted the partitioning and removal of the OEM stuff, I'd have to buy another copy. How irritating, since I HAVE a valid license. Ended up having to use the recovery disk after backing up my linux partition, and then uninstall AOL, COMPUSERVE, etc. etc. Big pain in the arse.
I purchased a laptop from Fujitsu. Naturally it came with Windows XP, so I requested a refund. After nearly 2 weeks of back and forth emails of me requesting a refund, and pointing them to various websites about the issue, and my claims against the EULA to use windows I got nowhere.
Their argument was i agreed to THEIR EULA which states i can't get a refund, when i purchased it. Either they were ignorant or refused to give a refund under any circumstance. I would have contacted a lawyer but it just isn't worth my time.
- tristan
And most vendors around here charge a 15% restocking fee for notebooks, so you can see how far you would get.
As has been suggested before, if you do not want a given item (Windows or whatever), then either look for a system that does not include it, build your own, or have someone build one to your specs. This will enable you to get exactly what you want and no more at a price you are willing to pay, and it will also provide an incentive for the manufacturers to provide systems that meet your desire so that they can get your business.
I consider the refund day concept to be little more than a minor publicity prank and of little practical value. What might make it beneficial would be for a group of users to purchase a product, refuse to accept the EULA, and then demand refunds per the instructions included in the EULA (supposedly this has happened with the people that would be participating in the refund day). Microsoft would probably point the users to the vendor, and the vendors would probably stand on their return policies. An ambitious and capable law firm might be able to make a case out of this, but the outcome would probably be along the lines of prohibiting vendors from charging restocking fees on items where the customer refuses to accept the EULA unless it was presented prior to purchase. The law firm wouyld also rack up fees to be paid by someone, probably the vendors. This would not amount to a significant change.
If you REALLY want to make a change in the marketplace, don't give your money to companies that you do not agree with or whose policies you dislike. If enough people do this it will force changes in the market. And if not enough people do this to make a difference, then you need to accept that you hold a minority viewpoint and are a niche customer.
IANAL, and you should pay for legal advice rather than believe anything you read here.
Bother, said Pooh, as he called in an air strike.
My friend ended up buying a Gateway PC and I told him to go back to "Gateway Country" to get his refund because he wanted to install Windows 2000 Pro-Not ME. The schmuck's at the GW store were clueless and refused to honor the EULA. A quick trip to the Washington State Attorney Generals Online Consumer Complaint Form and Corporate Gateway was calling him! They ended up (in an effort to keep a Gateway customer happy) paying him the price he paid for Winodws 2000 and the amount that I charged him to install it on his machine. The check he received from GW was around $500 US! If they had simply honored the EULA, GW would only have been out about $90? $120 tops. AND he got to keep all the software CD's that came with the PC. I don't think they ever really understood that he was entitled to the refund under the EULA.
Veritas patesco per quaestio questio. Truth is revealed through questions.
No, they are not. Of course they are not because in 95% of the time the customer wouldn't be aware of the alternative and thus will want Windows. However: have you ever *seen* the default installs of a Compaq or a Dell? No? I did: they are completely plastered with useless and idiot software, 3000 different services and stuff no normal user would ever need. Just to give you an idea: back in the Pentium days, I saw a Dell fresh out of the shop with 32Meg RAM (a lot in the time) and after bootup and doing nothing the memory usage was at 64Meg. Urks! That hurts, and that was a default install. Recent installs are better peformancewise, mainly due to cheap memory and fast CPU's, but the clutter is still there.
That is my problems with OEM's.... Not my problem with Microsoft. That is why any OEM machine that gest into my house just get booted up with a bootdisk/cd and reformatted on the spot.
And why don't people like Macs? (Linux I can understand) I don't get that: I used to dislike Macs, but that was a prejudice! I now have one and hell I've never had such a good system, and it's only an iBook.
So M$ is effectively breaching contract on the EULA, right? Any way one could mount an argument that this releases you from the terms of the EULA? 'Coz that would be nice....
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
err... how *did* the first refund day turn out?
Personally, I think it would be much easier to move to a service model -- but the cost can't come at purchase time. It has to come at activation time. If the first thing you do is reformat, there's no service charge at all.
Sounds great, but why would Microsoft buy into this? They currently has a stranglehold on the PC industry, so they can force the big PC makers to pay for the service up front, and they get their cut no matter what OS you choose to run on your laptop after you buy it.
About the only reason the big PC makers would consider this is that they could charge less by forcing the user to enter a CC# the minute they register their PC, thus making their PC's look cheaper to the end user. I can envision this being a nightmare to support. For example, I buy a Dell PC, bring it home, and instead of paying the $199 up front for 3 years of MS OS rental, I format the drive and put, for example, the Plan 9 operating system on it. Suddenly the modem goes. Does Dell customer service want to troubleshoot every existing OS I can install on their hardware? Do they want to "take my word" that the problem is hardware-related and not a Plan 9 driver problem?
More likely, a casual end user will skip the $199 registration and install their old version of 2000 or WinME/9x on the box - something Microsoft would very much not want to see happen.
"Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
The problem was that the default install had a bug in it that would crash the computer on shutdown or sleep. (Pretty annoying) Many other people have this computer where I live (a company 'bonus' of sorts), and as I occationally go out and 'fix' these things, I saw *alot* of them with no patch installed (clueless users with no internet access).
Since the patch was marginal at best, the eventual solution was to install windows 98 from a regular install disk. Since they have already paid for Windows (that doesn't work), can I give them a 'copy' under fair use rights? Would it be easier to get a refund for a windows 'install' that doesn't work?
Later, I'll tell you the story of the family that had *140 separate instances* of trojans running at the same time...
In general tying laws restrict when a manufacturer may tie in two products without offering the individual products for sale separately as well.
However, as long as we look at "a computer" as the product, a manufacturer may get away with tying without providing a bare box as an option in many countries by pointing to the fact that a consumer has many alternate sources of bare hardware.
On the other hand, though, a manufacturers offering a hardware platform with unique capabilities would have bigger problems doing this, as a consumer could claim that the manufacturer was utilizing it's monopoly in the manufacture of that specific hardware to pressure him/her to buy a product they don't want or need.
Various countries have wildly different laws here, but assuming that manufactureres are automatically free to decide what their system is made up of is wrong almost everywhere.
(ObDisclaimer: IANAL)
Now, since what you bought was actually a copyrighted item, not a licensed item (after all, were you presented with a licensing agreement at the time of sale? Didn't think so. And those EULAs don't count - they're an attempt to impose a license after after the sale) you can do whatever you want with it, except make copies in violation of the copyright.
Buy the machine with XP, install linux, and sell your copy of XP to whomever you want. They're free to register it, or not.
If you don't believe me, google the quebec consumer protection act,
This has probably been stated 100 times already on this thread, but the Microsoft license specifically states that if you don't agree to its terms, you can return it for a full refund. If your Nissan engine came with such an agreement, why wouldn't you expect to be able to return it?
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!