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Dell Refunds Vista/Works With Two Emails
look@thealternative.ch writes "Although many people have asked for pre-installed Linux, and Dell seems to have listened, some still think that buying a naked PC won't be easy. But what about stripping it naked after you buy it? I managed to get Windows Vista (and a bit more) refunded from Dell Germany last week. The process was surprisingly simple: 1) After delivery, ask Dell Support for refund by email. 2) ??? 3) Refund!!! Read the full email conversation in the original German or my English translation. For the impatient reader: The refund is €77.54 for Windows Vista Home Basic plus Works 8.0 (that is 15% of the total amount I paid). The whole process took 2 emails, 2 more to say thank you, and less than 48 hours. The money is already in my account. Kudos to Dell Customer Care (esp. 'Veronika') for being efficient and customer-oriented!"
Isn't it wonderful when the hot/nice telephone operator helps you out with your "problem" in an efficient manner. It's like this little relationship you're having you where she's completely at your service there making your life so so so wonderful.
But then she goes and does it with the next guy too. Dirty girl.
77 for Vista OEM is acceptable. Now, make that not an accident but a regular refund, and explain hos to do it elsewhere than in Germany, and I'm sold.
We're talking about a 1-800 number, not a 1-900.
Dear Vista Hater,
As you do not want the Windows Vista operating system, we will refund you the purchase price you paid for it (ca. 42.29 Euro gross). I would like to ask you to send me your bank details that I can mark the payment in our system. I need:
your name:
bank name:
city (of bank):
bank code:
account no:
The money should be paid back within one week.
Yours Sinfully,
Ajabaili Sakilikulu
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
I wonder how many sales reps Dell will lose in lynching incidents before they give up trying to sell those in the US Bible belt?
back in the day, after buying two computers from them and having generally bad support experiences.
This makes me want to give them another chance.
I wonder if they could automate the process the same way you track the shipment of your PC.
Enter your order ID. Enter your Vista key.. and then a refund is processed. The Vista key could be submitted to Microsoft such that it no longer authenticates copies of Vista on Dell PC's (XP/Vista activation and WGA knows the difference somehow, somewhere) and Dell can have the money sent to the user without tying up their customer support line.
Microsoft might be concerned that they don't get their money for this, but then again it would be against the law for them to do anything like force Dell not to do it, or insist that users do not get a refund anyway (the EU would have a field day and think up some higher billion dollar amounts for fines).
I bet it costs more to process it through 'Veronika' than clicking a website button would.
The uptake on this? I dunno. Maybe a lot of people would use it.. but a far higher number would not give a crap and carry on running Vista. I think shipping a naked/bare PC is extremely user-unfriendly and it also gives Dell a burn-in-test nightmare (how do you burn in a laptop which is supposed to have never had an OS installed on it? Do you then perform a military-grade disk wipe after you put the burn-in software on there? I dunno..). Putting the most popular, most needed for most people OS on the system (Vista I guess) is an okay thing to do. But I do think if you don't actually want Vista, you should be able to go through and click the Refund button..
That sounds nice an all, but it's in Germany. How about other places? Is German Dell an anomaly here?
This sig is neither interesting, nor humorous. Including meta-humor.
We all know you are just returning Vista so you can install a pirate copy of XP instead!
For almost 10 years, the lock on OSes to hardware with companies like Dell has not been mandated by MS, and finally we see one of these companies stepping up to the plate and doing the right things.
The Windows and or OSes tied to hardware are for pure support cost reasons at this point with companies like Dell/HP/etc.
Even prior to the dissolving of MS only contracts, any hardware company had the choice to not buy into an exclusive package from MS and pay the $5/10 bucks more per copy. And even though MS took the flack for this, it was not an uncommon model in the software/OEM industry and it was also something that the greed of OEMs were eager to take advantage of to the loss of their customers.
I was part of a fairly large OEM company during this timeframe, and we chose not to save the $5 a copy on OEM Windows, and still maintained a great relationship with MS even still we sold naked and *nix preloaded on many systems.
Sure we could have signed a bundling deal, just like we were offered by Corel and even IBM in the early years for OS/2, however saving a couple of $$ per Windows system was less important than providing our customers what they wanted.
So Kudos to Dell for finally stepping up and taking responsibility for the product they are selling...
So far as I can see, the guy could take the money and still be using vista. At least, I don't see anywhere any verification of the non-use was requested. so how does this work? what's to stop someone lying to Dell and getting 77 bucks
some still think that buying a naked PC won't be easy. But what about stripping it naked after you buy it?
Doing things that way always gets me waaay more in the mood. Gotta do it slowly though.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Since IANAL, do any of you know of differences in consumer laws/regulations that may have made it easier for the German or European customer? Previous slashdot stories suggested that a Windows refund have been a mess for US customers in the past.
Maybe charge PC vendors a "Gates" fee that is equivalent to 99% of the revenue of the OS, then charge $1 per Vista copy. So Dell can only refund $1 to the customer, but still pays about the same amount of what it would have sold in a year (assuming all PCs pre-installed with Windows).
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
...trust. For now, anyways.
There was a debate over what to name the new Germany everywhere in Europe except Germany.
In Germany the debate was over what to call France.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Note the following line:
Vista did not manage to recover from the aborted install process the previous day and got lost in an infinite loop of reboots. (I wonder what people do with a power outage during install as there was no such thing as a Vista-CD delivered...)
And I've noticed that some OEMs aren't setting up a "recovery" partition (basically, a second partition which can be booted directly from the BIOS which reinstalls the OS) any more. Not good at all. Heck, I took delivery of a PC only last week where there was no hardware fault from the factory, but there was something wrong with the OEM Windows install and it was stuck in a reboot loop. Didn't bother me as we've got a Windows site license so I could rebuild from our own media anyway, but that's not really the point.
That was EU77.00 for Vista and 00.54 for Works.
Sounds about right.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Step zero is to buy from Dell in Europe, not in USA. European consumer protection is far better than in USA.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
So how do they know you really formatted it, and aren't using Vista Home.
You are allowed by law to buy a PC without an OS on it, and Dell are obligated to offer to sell you the PC without the OS on it.
Don't expect it to be so easy anywhere else, Dell gets a lot of subsidy from Microsoft for the 'Linux' games it plays.
You took a perfectly good Windows computer and made it useless.
Why didn't you just buy a Linux box from a real vendor who actually uses hardware that Linux is known to support well?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I love non sequiturs so much!
Now, can you get a refund on the unused... dell?
Based on the comments on Vista here?
So far as I can see, the guy could take the money and still be using vista.
Dude, don't you know that you don't get the Wow if Vista is not Genuine? Where have you been?
Another way to look at it is as Saint Heinlein did, "Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can't help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity." The punishment is in the use.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I'm impressed to hear you got the crud Works refunded too. I didn't realise that was possible. I bet if more knew/could be bothered Dell and the like would be issuing loads of refunds. I bet less than 10% of users ever use Works.
Today I take delivery of my new dell laptop (with "opt in because there is no other choice" copy of Vista) and I'll be giving them a call/email a little later.
Thanks for submitting!
cockless wonder
I'm not so sure about that. Previously we had a law that actually required a new computer to ship with a pre-installed operating system. And it was long suspected that this law was probably provided to us by the very fine Microsoft government bribery machine. That was in the nineties though. I however don't know what happened to this law meanwhile. Local computer stores are obviously selling PCs without anything. (Or sometimes just with Windows 2000 "DEMO INSTALLATIONS" eventually.)
I asked dell customer support 4 years ago if I could get it cheaper b/c I don't use windows. They said yes. It was like EUR 80 for xp home. So to be sure ask before you buy. I ended up not buying the notebook. But a friend did it.
Dell has always handled that in a pro customer way. If they just would make windows an option in their webinterface, I don't mind if it's selected, but it should be de-selectable.
How many Linux fanboys really would buy something from Dell? I can't imagine that many people would not prefer to stick Linux on an old home built PC or build a new one custom.
... but here in Austria you can order Dell Workstations with Linux (RedHat) preinstalled. Also, about a year ago, I ordered a Dell Precision 380 workstation without a preinstalled OS (It came with a FreeDos partition containing drivers and docs IIRC). YMMV
Gee, I wonder who that AC was who just so happened to post the exact same thing?
Stupidass.
All those little demos and advertisements pay into Dell. So, yes, Dell is being paid to load windows.
dell open source desktops:e 510_nseries?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&~ck=mn
http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/
Aw, the poor little baby can't handle Vista!! When you get bigger you will TRY again and maybe then, with some maturity, you can handle it.
Perhaps it's the RAM requirements? 512MB is enough to boot without applications, fine. You can do a lot more in XP, Linux, OS X or a BSD with that much RAM though. A refund might allow the customer to put the actual OS they want on the system. What's wrong with that?
Dell: How can we help you?
Mr. Vista Free: My DVD burner exploded.
Dell: Right-click on the DVD drive and click "Properties".
Mr. Vista Free: I'm using Ubuntu.
Dell: Right-click on the icon please.
Mr. Vista Free: My friggin DVD drive exploded!
Dell: Please download the updated Vista drivers.
Mr. Vista Free: I run Ubuntu and besides I don't need drivers! I need a fire extinguisher!
Dell: Well please go to Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs and uninstall Ubuntu. That might be causing the problem.
Mr. Vista Free: LISTEN YOU DAMN CU... (head explodes)
Have you ever worked in a call center?
I want to write an Emo song and call it "I never call into Phone Sex lines because all the chicks who work at call centers are fat."
Karma: Non-Heinous
Why not call around to small local computer retailers and repair shops and see what they can put together for you?
When I bought my last desktop, I did exactly that. I knew roughly how fast I wanted it to be and what features I wanted, but didn't have the expertise to build it myself (or even choose all the right components). I also had a limited budget of about $500. I didn't need a video card or audio card, luckily (that would have blown my budget for sure), and I already owned a copy of Windows (I was not ready for Linux, I'm afraid).
I went to the shop and explained my needs. They picked out the appropriate parts for me and the next day I had a shiny new computer. I installed Windows myself, although they offered to do it for me. It was dead simple, and there was no worry or extra cost for shipping. All the parts were warrantied. They also warrantied their work for some period of time. The labour price was quite reasonable.
I suppose if you're located far from any decent shops, or need a large number of machines, or have some other particular need, the big guys are a good choice. But there are other options.
(Caveat: make sure you get a good power supply. Mine conked out after <4 years. Of course, that applies with any computer retailer. Cheaping out on that is a common way to lower prices.)
Barring upgrades and a new PS, it's still running 6 years later, and when I replace it I'll probably go back. (Granted, lots of upgrades. Most of which would be totally unnecessary if it weren't for those infernal games.)
The retailer in question was Gamepower Systems.
HP laptops and desktops come with a program that allows you to burn (or create ISO's for burning later) your copy of Windows XP and the driver disks associated when you first boot into windows. The only Craplet they came pre-installed with was the Goobar (Google toolbar) which I promptly removed.
/tin-foil hat) but that's what you bought the warranty for. You did buy the warranty didn't you?
I know this wont help when windows wont boot out of the box (what are the odds though, also could be a sign of tampering
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Ireland uses euros and is next door to the United Kingdom. So what about slashdot.ie? Or would that be too close to the abbreviation for a Microsoft product?
Must be a coincidence that is how Vista reacted when I put it into a Virtual Machine, it blue screened too!
Could it have to do with the fact that both Vista and ReactOS are unfinished operating systems?
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Really any PC system can run Linux or *BSD Unix, you don't need Mac hardware for that.
The only reason for buying a more expensive system like a Macintosh computer would to be to run Mac OSX on it. Otherwise you can buy PCs with the same hardware cheaper from other vendors sans an OS and install Linux or *BSD Unix whatever on it.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Generally, because the big guy's are cheaper. It's the economics of scale or something like that, I dunno, What am I an economics.. studying... person... ANYWAYS, most often you get better hardware for cheaper from a big guy than a local shop. Don't get me wrong though, the local shop has someone you can bring it in to when it catches on fire, and someone who you can actually yell at face to face, or throw stuff at (I worked at a local place for a year or so while in highschool).
last time I looked the price difference was around $200 between assembling a computer yourself, and getting an equal dell. but that changes around a lot depending on where you get your local parts, and again now that dell is refunding windows apparently.
Also, with the money saved you can just throw your computer out after three years (Or turn it into a file server, or better yet donate it to a community group that will probably find a good use for it) and buy a new one. Yes you can use linux on bare scraps of hardware, by why fight with a computer? having modern hardware makes it so much more enjoyable to use your computer.
I tried support through Phone, Chat, and Email, was told there is no way to get any such refund. I sent one last email, that was word for word the same as this guy's except for Dell was changed to Compaq. I have not yet received a response. I'm now running Ubuntu, and using VMPlayer to run MS Win XP Pro. It is funny, XP Pro run in VMplayer with a 20 gig slice and given 128 MB runs much better than Vista did on it's own.
What do you say if I buy from Apple and then install ubuntu?
Hi, I just checked this news, and when I oppened my e-mail, there it was
in a F.S. list, a message witht eh subject "Getting back the money from pre-installed
Windows in a Dell computer". I thought at first it would be a link to this same
news.
However, it tuerned out to be a brazillian customer who achieved just the same
over the past week. You can check the google translation, or the original blog entry if you can read Portuguese.
It was not as easy as in TFA, though, the customer had to make a phone call, and mention by name brazillian customer law, which forbids bound product selling.
-><- no
Well, if you're upgrading every 3 years, you can probably save that $200 by keeping your old case, along with parts that don't need upgrading. (Do you really need a new sound card? 56k modem? fans? PSU?) Shipping probably covers the rest (Dell requires logins to see how much shipping cost, so screw it, but I'm assuming it's somewhere in the $50 range). Anyway, that's my geek talking. For people who don't mess with their computers' innards, I suppose reusing parts is out of the question.
A the mid-range, if you're paying $1500 instead of $1300, $200 isn't such a huge difference that it makes the thing more disposable. At the high end, $200 is the difference between the top-of-the-line CPU and the one that came out last month. It's trivial.
Sure, at the lowest end, $400 is a better deal than $500. But at the low end, are you really getting the most "modern equipment" anyway? No--you're getting a email/internet/word-processing machine. How much are you paying for shipping? How long are you waiting for it to be delivered? How long are you waiting if it needs to be repaired? If you're a business, what is the downtime costing you? (Based on a recent conversation with my boss, I estimate our business (not a big outfit) would lose at least $400/week without email. We barely even use computers.)
It can be done in the states too.3 7
Actually there's an entire guide with answers to all arguments you might meet.
http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=07/01/03/2272
PC is without OS.
When you buy the PC with windows, you get the included software such as Norton AV, or whatever.
The inclusion of all this software (which then tries to hit you for upgrades or subscriptions) pretty much covers the cost of OEM windows, to my understanding.
Now, if Microsoft actually refunds you the money for the licence, then Dell is actually ahead here! And it may be legal for them to do this if their deal with Norton et al is based on the number of installs sold, and there is no clause for when the user removes software. Very different from the situation if the machine is sold clean.
You get the M$ money back while Dell get the money for including extra software on your windows install.
Just speculation, someone tell me if this is wrong...
Michael
There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.
I know this wont help when windows wont boot out of the box (what are the odds though, also could be a sign of tampering /tin-foil hat) but that's what you bought the warranty for. You did buy the warranty didn't you?
No. I live in a country where if something doesn't work from the moment you get it out of the box, you're perfectly entitled to demand a refund or replacement and there's nothing the supplier can do about it unless you were warned of this possibility before you made the purchase (ie. it was sold "as seen").
This is a country where warranties are of very little use since many of them don't offer anything above what you are already entitled to in the first place.
I specifically asked the Sony Centre this before I bought a new laptop, and I got a "no, never heard of a refund" answer. Worse, they couldn't offer me a laptop with XP installed either, it's all Vista or nothing now, even when I explained to them that this would mean we could no longer buy Sony (as I set a groupwide ban on buying Vista unless we either have answers on DRM or have completed our Ubuntu tests).
I needed a laptop there and then so I bought it, imaged the Vista off the machine and Ubuntu on it.
I'll resume that battle some other time, they take advantage of the fact that it takes time and effort to fight idiocy..
Insert
Recovery partition is a waste of space. Especially on laptops. OEMs (IBM ThinkPads included) that setup recovery partition, usually refuse to provide standard recovery cds or install media. If disk breaks, you lose both partitions.
European keyboards have a period on the numeric keypad. Windows has 2 versions of each keymap, so you can choose whether it gives you a period or a comma. Under Linux, you can specify an option in xorg.conf.
Calculators tend to have a period key and most of the time they would display a dot as the decimal separator. I have seen LCD calculators that could display periods and commas though.
they say cinq point cinq, yet they write it as 5,5.Must be a Quebec thing. In France they say "cinq virgulle cinq". In every country I know they use the word for "comma".
WWTTD?
Judging by the emails, they didn't want to see any proof that you had uninstalled Windows, or even that you had actually bought a Dell machine.
Is this offer of free money available to everyone? Or did they check more than you show in the emails?
It sounds like a typical Nigerian scam email; a significant amount of today's spam is made of such messages. See the wikipedia entry on Internet fraud.
The saddest poem
It's nice to see Dell have reacted quickly. Acer, however, are fecking useless.
I had Windows MCE removed from my notebook on 9th January and I am still waiting for the refund. I have written to them for the last time today warning them that unless I receive the refund quickly I will be taking legal action against them. I have been patient but they are taking the piss. It has been 75 days since the removal and I have received nothing. If I have no luck with a solicitor then I am going to go to their head office. I will stand outside their office with a placard stating they are thieves if I have to. I will not let some corporation rip me off.
This is theft pure and simple. In my letter to them, sent recorded delivery, I have made it clear that criminal charges of theft and fraud will be levied against them if my refund is not recieved by 6th April.
Acer have one pissed off customer.
I read "Dell Refunds Vista" and "Works With Two Emails" separately and then parsed the second phrase as a Native American name, akin to "Dances With Wolves" and "Stands With a Fist".
How would a Native American get the name "Works With Two Emails"?
Not a waste of space if the OS gets hosed, as it was in the case I cited.
IBM also supply an application to make recovery CDs using the data in the recovery partition, and when I had to get a disk replaced under warranty (and explained that I didn't have recovery CDs) they were nice enough to send those out gratis as well.
Case in point: I had a qtec gold 550W psu (~£30 at the time) that died within a week. The replacement died a year later when I managed to short the pc's audio front panel plugging my headphones in. It wasn't even the psu that stopped it, the fuse in the power cord went. I bought a Tagan 480W for £70 (they're much cheaper now) and it's been running ever since. Even an unfortunate accident involving metal in my pc (oops) just made it trip it's built-in short protector instead of burning like the qtec did.
And the entire 'less than 10%' show up at the local kinkos, with their Works file saved on a dented old floppy disk, giving nightmares to the poor kinkos copyboy they walk up to, hoping to get a decent print out of that thing
This is great! Has anyone been successful in getting a refund from Apple for a naked PC? Oops... you mean that there is an Apple tax that must be paid.
Shocking!
http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=07/01/03/22723 7
I just ordered a Dell on Saturday and I'm going to try this - seems reasonable and well-documented.
And now Dell are selling these machines for EU 77.54 more.
French-canadian Mac keyboards have a comma on the numeric keypad... and that sucks when trying to type in an IP address. I've seen calculators with both, probably depends on brand.
I suppose it is. Since we're trapped between Europe (from our French heritage) and the US (from our geographical situation), we're constantly living with both systems. The baby-boomers generation has been raised with the English/imperial system only, but the later generation are "theorically" under metric. However, we learned to use both fluently. I weigh 180lbs and 81kg. I cut a piece of wood 30 centimeters long and 6 inches wide. I buy my milk by the liter and my butter by the pound. Just as I say "five point five" while I write 5,5.
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
I will buy from Dell my next notebook then! :) Do you think that will works from Venezuela?... :S
ghostbar page.
There were specific reasons to go for this laptop, otherwise I would have agreed with you and looked around. They look interesting, but they're not where I live..
:-).
Besides, the Sony VGN-SZ4(bla) DOES work with Ubuntu (all my systems dual boot - until I have time to VMWare the Windows partition).. It positively flies, even the camera is now accessible (no idea about the finger print reader yet - don't like biometrics that much).
And it runs Beryl just fine too
Insert
So I called Dell tonight, hoping to talk through the possibility of getting a refund before purchasing, and I spoke with three different people, and they all insisted that Dell has no system in place for any sort of refund. I pointed out that i had read accounts of US and international users receiving refunds, and they insisted there was no system set in place for refunds, on a global scale. i pointed out that i knew they were wrong and that as long as the customer never accepted the EULA for vista they were entitled to a refund, and they just repeated that no mechanism was in place to deliever any sort of refunds (or credits).
they did point out what they call their "open source" models, which are models without an OS installed, and they are available to customize online, but the customization of these models is somehwat limited, at least compared to other models...
i was on the phone for about 1 hour with multiple departments and at least one "manager," whatever that means.
so, i know people have been able to get refunds, but it is NOT easy at all. maybe if you have already purchased the system you have a little more bargaining power, i dont know...
So, I tried it, no pbm for a refund. Except that refund is only 14 euros !! Very strange ... :) Obviously, I said, give me that Vista, I will remove it and complain for a refund.... but clearly, this is an efficient way to force you to buy 14 euros a useless product : make its absence costing 90 euros !!
and it was 'very exceptional to do this, blabla, specially for you, blabla,...' As I have to buy another dell computer, I asked : 'how to do it directly at purchase time ?
Just call this phone number and do your command with an human !
Fine ! I tried a few hours later.
When asking to remove Vista and Works, it was so unusual that the woman had to ask some god at Dell and recall me later.
And there were two interesting points :
-> the exact configuration I asked was not available without Vista. As it was only a minor difference with frequency of the processor, I said : never mind...
-> According to dell site, the price for my configuration was 833,70 euros . The woman said me : without Vista, it is 1021 euros !!!!
I yelled a little : the answer was : 'this the new official Dell's politic' !! So much change in only a few hours