Vista Family Discount Keys Found Not Compatible

acousticiris writes "Many (if not all) users who took advantage of Microsoft's Vista Family Discount have been issued invalid installation keys and cannot install Windows Vista Home Premium. Microsoft says, 'There is no expected time period for a fix at this time.' According to the article, the keys are valid for something, just not Windows Vista. Perhaps it's just too simple to issue these folks new keys and send them on their way."

Comments

Paid customers getting the shaft?

[wesley96]

Ah, whodathunkit? :P Anyway, I have an itchy feeling some cracker might be able to put out a valid serial generator before MS could fix this problem.

Re:Paid customers getting the shaft?

[Nutty_Irishman]

Ah, whodathunkit? :P Anyway, I have an itchy feeling some cracker might be able to put out a valid serial generator before MS could fix this problem. Personally I believe in equal opportunity piracy. But, whatever floats your boat...

Re:Paid customers getting the shaft?

[Anonymous Coward]

'Kay, this is from MacSlash, so obviously it has a bit of Mac slant to it. However, the story seems to check out and what's worse is the account how Microsoft handles the problem. What a horrible company.

MS has a Family Program, where if you buy a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate (the high end version), you can then also purchase up two two licenses of Windows Vista Home Premium at $50 each for additional machines in your home using a special web site. This is only offered for those who purchase their copy of Vista Ultimate through a retail channel.

I purchased the Ultimate copy via Amazon for my Macbook Pro at work ($400) and then when I got home, I purchased one additional license ($50) for Home Premium through the Microsoft web site for my iMac at home. That's $450 that I gave Microsoft.

The online sale went fine and I was issued a license key for my second machine. The problem was that the key didn't work. I re-entered and double-checked it at length with no luck. Time to go to support. In the email I received it had a web link to follow if you need help, so I clicked. It goes to a non-existant page at microsoft.com, and still does today.

So, next I called the toll-free number in the email. It turns out that this is a Microsoft number, but for a different project. The person who answered my call was unusually candid with me. The poor people working at that number were not equipped for the deluge of calls they were receiving. They were not even supposed to be getting these calls. They had not been trained themselves on how to use Vista yet and had no idea what to do to remedy the problem. He told me that they've been getting "thousands" of calls all day long for this very same issue and that he can confirm for me that the keys being generated by the web site are not working for anyone.

He said all he could do was to take my name and number, which he wrote down on physical paper to deliver to his supervisor (I thought Microsoft had email, silly me). He said they were trying to get the attention of someone "higher in the food chain" to do something about it - or at least shut down the offending web page that's issuing the invalid keys. He told me he hoped that someone would get back to me "within a few days" and that he's very sorry but has nothing more to offer.

Microsoft does not offer refunds for purchases made through their web site and they are sticking to that policy, leaving users like me who already paid them hundreds of dollars with no recourse and unable to affect the remedy to this horrible situation.

On the very day that an OS is released that's been in development for half a decade, the least I expect is that their ordering systems are working correctly and their staff is properly prepared.

This has one again reinforced my impression of Microsoft as being an unresponsive company that makes crap software.

and a follow up from another poster:

Last night, I received an email from MS Support. The person sending it was telling me that she is taking "ownership" of my case and provided me her direct email address. Finally, I thought, I'm getting somewhere.

Having heard nothing more, this morning I sent her an email asking for the status of my case. No response yet. I sent another around lunchtime, still no response. So, this afternoon, I phoned them back at the number given to me in the email last night.

I was horrifed to find out that MS claims my case is closed and resolved! They transferred me to someone who could open my case back up for me, and then back to Customer Service. Being unable to help me, Customer Service transferred me to Tech Support.

After explaining the whole story from scratch again, t

family values

[rigelstar]

Microsoft has begun its war against the american family. Grab your pitchforks and join the final battle!

Re:family values

[vought]

Thankfully for those of us with several Macs, Apple doesn't require activation or serialization of the Mac OS X family pack.

Just sayin'.

Re:family values

[clontzman]

They do, however, require that your hardware have a shiny Apple logo on the outside, so let's not get too excited.

Unacceptable

[mfh]

'There is no expected time period for a fix at this time.'

This is an unacceptable response. As someone who sells PCs, I am looking at Apple wondering when they will get off their asses and start selling MacOS for PC machines, so I can simply stop selling Windows crap.

Oh no...

[tktk]

The keys are valid for some other product. The four words I dread to hear:

Microsoft Bob for Vista.

Why would they subject themselves to this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to ask myself what sort of people would subject themselves to this sort of abuse. It has just been getting worse since the days of Windows 95. Every new release of Windows comes with some new anti-piracy hassle, and every time it seems to cause major problems.

I'd image such people at least somewhat competent when using a computer. Many non-technical computer users don't even know what Vista is, let alone that it has been released, and thus wouldn't be updating their systems so quickly. I'd expect such people would also be aware of how this sort of bullshit gets worse and worse with each release of Windows. Why do they accept being treated like criminals? Why do they accept being treated like nothing more than shit?

Re:Why would they subject themselves to this?

[fyngyrz]

Also...

Why would they accept an OS that gets slower with every release? Why would they accept an OS that requires more and more from their hardware investment, eventually requiring replacement (as may be very likely the case with Vista) instead of getting sleeker and slimmer and more efficient? Why would they accept an OS that carries with it the highest threat of adware, viruses, worms, trojans - for whatever reason? When terrible mistakes are made - like activex - why don't they expect the company to fix those mistakes?

Just wondering. I mean clearly, they do not hold Microsoft to a very high standard. I left the OS a couple of years ago, having had all I was willing to take. But most people around me stick with MS, regardless of what trouble they have.

Personally, I think part of the answer is application lock-in; people who use some app that they can't get away from, and where the developers force them to upgrade to the next OS because otherwise, the next version or revision of the locked-in app won't work.

Re:Why would they subject themselves to this?

[Martin Blank]

Why would they accept an OS that gets slower with every release?

RH9 pretty much screamed on one of my home systems. FC1 was pretty snappy, too. FC3, not so much. FC5 was even a little slower. FC6 seemed to stabilize. In all cases, I was running a pretty basic desktop environment without anything flashy, not much in the way of extraneous services running (HTTP and FTP only), and only me accessing them.

All major OSes get some bloat as they grow. Vista's sheer size is inexcusable, but it's not terribly slower than XP, at least on a 1.6GHz P4 notebook.

Re:Why would they subject themselves to this?

[TropicalCoder]

I just posted this in the topic about Window's new DRM patents, and realized after that that discussion is already dead. Seems everyone jumped into the discussion about the guy who gave up on Linux after 10 years, and now there has been almost a dozen discussions since then. I just want to make a point I feel really strongly about. I don't think there is anything really wrong with this if you are up front about it. At the risk of being marked off topic, here I go with my little rant...

While many of you Linux user don't seem to be too worried about this, I think you should be. As pointed out by others, it will have a detrimental effect right across the board. No more dual boot with Windows and Linux. No Wine, no more popular drivers for Linux because of the DRM, no virtual machines that run Linux without paying a Windows tax, and in the end, it will get harder every day to find a computer that will even run Linux.

As a Window's programmer since 3.1, I am seeing a nightmare scenario staring me in the face. I can see the day coming when a person can no longer develop software on their own computer, because it will only run in some kind of sandbox, if at all, unless you buy a special developer's license. Of course I too will finally defect to Linux long before that happens, if that is still an option.

I'm am seriously disturbed by the vision I am seeing in all I have read tonight - but I am too tired to articulate it all - it's late at night where I am at the moment and it's been a long day. It's like someone said - the frog in the pot thing - the public has to wake up to this DRM business before it's too late.

Before I go - there is one more thing I want to get off my chest here. One might hope and pray that it will be stopped by anti-trust laws before it goes too far, but I wouldn't get my hopes up. Why did the courts not press for a breakup of Microsoft? I think they were leaned on by the US government - for a reason I have not seen articulated before. The fact is that Microsoft is a US corporation, one of America's finest. It brings in big bucks to the good ol' US of A. So from a local perspective, among fellow Americans, Microsoft's monopolistic practices are scandalous, but if an American - especially a Congressman - looks at it from a nationalistic perspective, it's good for America. In fact, the worse it becomes (the monopolistic practices) the better it is for USA. Bill Gates' age old dream of world domination happens to coincide with America's dream of world domination. That's why we can't count on the US courts to put a stop to this.

Wow - I didn't think I was going to say all these things. It's like suddenly I see where all this is going now, and it's real scary.

Re:Why would they subject themselves to this?

[fyngyrz]

All major OSes get some bloat as they grow.

<RAMBLE>

Well, maybe that's a signal we're looking at things incorrectly, then. Why not build a stable core - multitasking, networking, application sandboxing, list management, basic graphics with user-settable bitmaps and/or polygonal models -- the rest of the usual suspects like disk io and USB -- and then let the user decide if they want, for instance, to add a 3d desktop with voice and haptic features, widgets, zooming, 400 language compatibility (OSX carries a crapload of language stuff to your drive it doesn't really need to, for instance) and drivers for every printer ever known to man?

That almost sounds like a linux release, but the key thing missing in all linux versions is a stable and always-there set of GUI tools so applications can run on the OS itself. linux (IMO) is crippled by that lack of a standard GUI layer. It has almost everything else, I'm perfectly ready to concede. Be nice if it had a little bit smarter permissions - like being able to say that "this dir is read/write, but nothing can execute here" without having to set the dir up on its own partition, etc., but at least there is a workaround.

In fact, that's how I ended up with Apple's OSX. It's almost linux from my user / developer point of view, but it has a solid GUI I am under the impression I can count on, and I don't have to pay fees to use or get the user to try to download.

I'd like to see something more basic, though. I know these marvelous machines we have today would run like raped apes if we actually tried to make them do so, instead of trying to make them do "everything for everybody." Vista's gone and collected 10% or so of a modern CPU for itself, if the rumors I hear are correct; is that really where we want to be? Damn, 10% of a modern CPU is what, 100% of one five years ago?

Sometimes I write software to run in a shell in OSX or linux and just enjoy the zappiness of it all. I am heavily involved in AI experimentation, particularly in the multiply-associative memory area, and I always write that stuff for a text shell. A real linux text shell actually runnning in text mode... man that's fast. :)

</RAMBLE>

This is exactly the reason

[geekoid]

for not installing something as critical as an OS as soon as it comes out.

Your really have to be stupid to do that.

digest

[Andrei D]

I think there will be many *issues* Vista will have in the next months. Maybe slashdot should compile a monthly digest and publish that instead. Am I the only one who got bored of Vista already? I'm a romanian, and I don't even consider getting a torrent of vista. Imagine how bored Vista makes me feel!

Re:Upgrade does not include Vista Premium..

[Agelmar]

Actually, I think you are the one who misunderstands.

The program is basically this: If you bought a retail version of Windows Vista Ultimate, you can buy two additional upgrade licenses for $50 each. These upgrade licenses are for Windows Vista Home Premium - i.e. you don't get two more Ultimate licenses, you get 2 home premium upg licenses. Hence the bit about home premium.

Seriously, get a grip people

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, I like reading /. for the tech/science news. It's a very valuable tool for that. But, honestly, when every other article is another Vista-bashing FUD extravanza, this site really loses its respectability.

This site is supposed to be about news and technical scoops not about personal opinion or flame wars. Get a grip. We like different operating systems. All the other ones suck. Let's move on and talk about something interesting.