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French Judge Orders Refund For Pre-Installed XP
Racketiciel writes "A French user asked for a refund after buying an ASUS computer
that came with Windows XP and other software pre-installed. ASUS tried to
apply a procedure which cost more money to the consumer than they
will give back... The court ruled in favor of the user,
who received back 130 Euro (~200 $) for the software.
Here is the ruling (PDF, French). In France, this is the fourth victory for refund seekers during the last two years,
and many people are now filing for refunds (in French). Two French associations (AFUL
and April) published
a press release on this victory the same day an important hearing happened." The English-language press release linked above gives a pretty good idea of what happened here, for those unsuited to wading through French.
I don't know that I have anything solid to base this on, but I've always guessed that the real cost per copy that larger systems makers have to pass on to Microsoft is more in the $30 range.
Collector's Edition
This will force the PC vendors (in France anyway) to provide better Linux options.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Unlike USA - where the DOJ's anti-trust ruling has no real impact on MS's business - the Eurpoeans take this more seriously. They feel that there should be options other than the monopolistic one.
Forcing vendors to give back more than the XP cost sends a clear message: give non-MS options or feel the pain.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
What surprises me is that the French got labelled as surrender-happy, when Norway, Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg all did the same thing, not to mention the Italians which switched sides in both world wars to avoid being the losing side.
:P ).
Btw France fought tooth and nail in the first world war, so its not from that (and it certainly wasn't taken over, you might want to brush up on history a bit
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
I look at it one of two ways:
(1) She bought the computer knowing it had Windows XP on the system and decided that she didn't like the terms after she bought it, ergo she (and the court / law is wrong) because you should not be able to modify the terms of a contract after it has been executed. (Even if you don't want to be party to the other party's outside deal.) You know the terms, deal with it.
Or (2) she bought a computer without regard to the specs (highly unlikely, but for the sake of arguement we'll go with it). She gets it home and finds it has something she didn't like. So she sued (after probably asking the company to refund it, which in my opinion they rightly and justifably denied). The law / court failed again, because there are vendors who sell computers without an OS (or an alternative OS) and she could have patronized their business. Yet she unjustifiably cried foul and forced a company give her a refund (essentially, saying that the company needs to sell its product her way, which is bullshit). Granted, however if France already has a law saying that a company HAS to sell computers without OS (which I don't think any particular country does, but again for sake of arguement I'll assume they do), then ASUS is in the wrong.
Truthfully, if it were my company I'd analyze how much profit is actually earned from that country and if it wasn't a mid to substantial amount (> than 15%) I'd tell the country (in this case, France) go fuck themselves (politely of course). If the government feels so strongly about it, let them sell computers they way they want them sold.
Regards,
MBC1977,
Your point interests me in a way you do not intend.
The only reason we view engines and air conditioning as irreplaceable parts of the car is the historical way we got here.
It would be fairly easy to force car makers to use standard connections and mounts and form factors for air conditioners and alternators instead of allowing the auto companies to customize them so they can be bundled.
I can't see that there is a need for more than a few kinds of alternators or A/C units.
Even for engines, the mountings could be standard even if the guts are custom.
AND if they were standardized, then the costs should drop dramatically. All the standardized parts would be commodotized.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
MSI announced two versions of the "Wind" UMPC notebook, Windows versions and Linux versions.
They are pulling this scam too by making the linux version with 50% less RAM, 50% less battery and taking away bluetooth!
Needless to say, many are miffed that they would have an unwanted software charge attached to the price just to get the more capable hardware!
Independent of this article I was bloody well going to ask for a refund on the unused XP as the precedent is already several years old IIRC. This news just makes my surety to demand it off them go from 50% to 95%.
Jokes are just that.
In Texas, we make all kinds of jokes about "Aggies" implying they are exceptionally stupid.
And then there are blond and dead baby jokes.
Your average french citizen is similar to people from other cultures.
I'm sure the french soldiers on the Magenot [sp] line would have fought very hard to defend france but they got driven around. The folks behind the line were not ready to fight germans with tanks with virtually no warning. To have something like the impact of a blitzkrieg war today, imagine that an enemy country could teleport their entire army inside your country.
However, just like an "aggie" joke or a "blonde" joke or a "dead baby" joke wouldn't make any sense with some other subject, the "french surrender" jokes wouldn't be funny with someone else now. I laughed at the "French military rifles for sale, dropped once" joke myself.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Missing the point here a little.
The Computer will not function without these things.
It will function without paying for an OS.
Don't be obtuse. You surely know that consumer PCs without preinstalled Windows are about as common as new cars sold without engines. And please don't tell me that I'm wrong just because your notions of what the free market should provide don't match the reality of what the free market does provide.
I imagine that it is no easier to find a Windowless PC in France than in the US. In fact, it is damn near impossible for a consumer in the US to buy a PC without Vista much less without a Microsoft OS.
Don't believe me? Try it. I have. It's possible. It's not easy.
About the only MS-less PC you can buy easily in the US is Wal-Mart's $199 PC (Everex TC2502) which comes with a Linux gOS that is gorgeous visually, but quite buggy compared to other Debian based Linuxes. The TC2502 uses a Via C7 CPU running at 1.5GHz. I personally think that's good because of its low power consumption, but this is a low end machine with 500mb of memory, 80GB hard drive, ho-hum graphics, slow CPU. If I recall correctly, they have to upgrade the hardware (and the price of course) in order to shoehorn Vista into it.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
(US Marine, College Student, and Proud Parent!)
US Marine > I suspect you must be an authoritarians, hence your tendency to side with authority (in this case, Microsoft), no matter how wrong, against the little guy, no matter how right.
That's the same mindset that make some people blame the victim in case of rape (look at what she was wearing!), prisoner abuse (if he was in prison he probably deserved it!), war crimes, and so on.
It's not your fault, just follow the link in my sig and educate yourself.
A heck of a lot of us live in countries where the native language isn't English. I'm English from the UK, but living 20 years over here in Greece (Europe).
Most of the laptop vendors ship *only* the local native language version of (mostly) Windows Vista. If you're really lucky then you might see the English version. I spend a lot of time "cleaning" bloody Greek Vista *off* new Acers, HP notebooks and replacing it with English XP. You see - here in Athens (Greece if you forgot) we have lots and lots of people from all over the world (who don't want a Greek system but got stuck with it when they bought their nice new shiny whatever).
I have the pleasure of babysitting a friends internet cafe (on sundays it's more like Manilla than Athens because that's the day the girls from the Phillipines get their day off - eat yer heart out basement dwellers (grins)).
Some of this nonsense wouldn't be needed if Vista shipped MUI out of the tin . (Curiously though the MUI version of XP seems to be the norm amongst my friends from the arab world).
If a machine ships with what is essentially a "useless" system, then you should be able to refuse the EULA and get a refund. What i'd really like to see is some EU wide ruling as to the *size* of that refund so that consumers would be aware of their rights . Fitness for use etc. is an issue.
Andy.
And then the place of purchase says 'not applicable, sucker'. Yes, every fucking time I've tried it in the US. Good thing there are countries with anti-tie-in laws as mentioned in TFA.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Needed to be said. As a Briton I've more fondness for France than America (an unusually position as most people here loathe them both with equal measure) and am getting tired of these French=Cowards jokes. In many ways their country is better than ours, and this should be a source of embarrassment for us because they have a similar sized economy and population. I guess that is why it is deemed necessary for the media to lay on the French-hate so thick, in case British people start to say "Hey, why can't we have fast trains that turn up on time?" and such stuff.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Even though the French are our traditional enemy here in England, when I was a kid (I'm in my 50s too) the meme was the Italians surrendering. Presumably because they did try to surrender in WWII (admittedly in the direction we liked), which it seems counted more than the simple tactical withdrawal France made over Paris. It seems an interesting reflection on the notion of honour.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Actually in France Apple gives you a refund of OSX if you ask within 7days after having bought the computer. Some people like to waste their money and buy a Mac to run GNU/Linux.
Completely irrelevant. French law, as in most of Europe, does not allow tying (bundling two or more products and refusing to sell them independently). If someone wants to buy a product by itself and the reseller refuses, then the approach of buying the product and requesting a refund for part of the bundle and suing if they refuse is perfectly reasonable - it's a way of ensuring that there's a real reason to comply with the law, lest they have to deal with a spate of lawsuits.
These laws have been on the book for decades, and they've proven time and time again to be good for consumers and good for competition.
Don't like it? Then don't do business here. Just as you have to comply with a buttload of other laws to do business anywhere, we expect people to adhere to laws to protect consumers and competition.
For someone that is the extremely naive libertarian in the sense of "the least number of laws possible" I can see opposing this, but anyone that want a market that is as free as possible really should think twice before coming out against laws like this - history is full of tying arrangements that have created real market barriers. Microsoft's practice of blanket licenses for OEM's being a perfect example. But Microsoft only got slapped down over it because of their extreme dominance - a smaller but still large player could still do a lot of damage with similar tactics.
In Finland, a similar law was recently repealed. Politicians succumbed to strong lobbying pressure from large corporations, especially in the telecoms industry. They wanted to sell binding subscriptions by bundling in hardware.
The competition between operators was fierce previously. Now the big ones can hook people for two years by selling hardware bundled with very pricey subscriptions.
Americans may be laughing at the French, but what many of them fail to realize is that the rest of the world is laughing at them; many of us are just too polite to say anything.
I have triple citizenship (Canada, US, Holland), but identify primarily as Canadian, having spent the vast majority of my life in Canada. In light of this, I get the brilliant combination of feeling irritated at the endless Canadian jokes on slashdot (due to completely unjustified South Park references with no basis in reality) and the shame of seeing how my fellow Americans act towards other cultures.
Yeah, you might think your unjustified jabs at other countries are funny, and perhaps they were the first few times, but now they're getting very, very old.
And people in Europe believe every stereotype they hear about the US, especially propaganda...
It's a leftover of initial reactions in the media of Britain and the US to the shocking defeat of France in just a few weeks in 1940.
A similar thing happened in the first few days American stwith the Netherlands. While the Dutch army was being ripped apart by the Germans, newspapers in the rest of the world were wildly speculating about fifth columns and the neutral Dutch's unwillingness to really put up a fight (in other words treason).
Even though everyone already knew that the Dutch would be no match for the Germans, public opinion was simply not prepared for a war in which a country could be overrun in a matter of days. Even a lackluster performance should have been able to hold off the enemy for "just a month" in people's minds (with WWI as a frame of reference) to give the French time to deploy.
After the Germans finished off the Dutch, just a few days later the French-Belgian-British defence also started collapsing, and the newspapers shifted their attention to perceived French cowardice and incompetent leadership (treason being a lesser explanation here, since the French weren't neutral).
Since the Germans didn't KO any more formidable powers than France after that, this analysis of events got stuck in people's minds.
The events of 1940 of course clearly show the superiority of Germany over their neighbours, but comparing US performance in later years to the losers of 1940 is really apples and oranges: in the spring of 1940 the US standing army was no larger and hardly better prepared than the mobilized Dutch or Belgian one, and in 1940 all of Europe had just started producing newly designed aircraft and tanks that would have given them the edge over the Germans given a year. It is just distance and a large body of water that makes the difference.
Check out also Battles_of_Narvik on Wikipedia. Combined British, French, Polish, and Norwegian forces won the first victory of WWII against the Wehrmacht there. We still honor every year those who fought with us and for us.