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Amazon US Refunds Windows License Fee, Too
rrohbeck writes "Today Amazon credited my card with $65.45. After ordering an Eee PC 1005 HA from amazon.com, I asked them for a refund for the cost of Windows XP via the 'Contact us' form. At first they told me to cancel any items on my order that I wanted a refund for, but after I explained that XP was pre-installed on the machine they got it. They asked what the cost of the OS was, and I answered that I had no idea but that Amazon UK refunded £40.00. Within a few hours I got a response saying 'I've requested a refund of $65.45 to your Visa card.' Somehow I doubt that Amazon will charge Asus or even Microsoft, but maybe they will one day if more people do this. Oh, and peeling off the 'Designed for Microsoft Windows XP' sticker is easy, too."
The news about the death of customer service are greatly exaggerated.
They may require you to send it back along with any manuals or repair disks.
bomb the us up set someone
they will just raise the price for everyone else.
Instead of a ~$65 refund, I bet you could peel the sticker off and sell the COA to someone for $100. MS may not like it, but it'll activate on another computer and won't ever fail WGA. You end up with an extra $35 in your pocket, and your friend will have slightly cheaper oem COA. This is especially handy because one cannot buy XP retail anymore.
They sure as hell won't be refunding $65 to everyone, when the OEM probably only paid $15 dollars for it or less.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Now you can install your pirate Corporate Pro version.
I did the same with Dell last year when I ordered my XPS M1330. It came with Vista + MS Works (at the time they had no pretend Linux alternative - with lower specs and same price as a Vista laptop).
I wrote to Dell for a refund and enclosed a printed out screenshot (via digital camera) of me ticking the "I reject license" on Vista bootup and another screenshot of Kubuntu running on the laptop.
A month later I was refunded £120 + vat for both Vista and Works. Not bad considering the laptop cost £520 - minus M$ Tax = £400.
Personally it would be funnier to leave the 'Designed for Windows XP' sticker alone and place a 'But running a real OS instead' sticker next to it.
Thinkgeek.com should start selling some of those (in the small metallic glossy format typical of such things).
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
it's no skin off your ass to keep the OS.
It may be no skin, but it is apparently $65.
He did what is right for him. As others have pointed out more generically, why should he subsidize your Windows use?
Did he tell you to refuse the MS license and to reclaim your fee? I didn't see it.
First off, if 10 people do this, Amazon is going to find out what it really costs, and it isn't $65 or anything close to that.
Secondly, they are't going to do this without some kind of verification. It sounds like someone asked for money and they gave it to them. Great customer service but hardly something they can operate a business on. So unless there is a verifiable way to determine that XP has been irrevocably uninstalled I don't see this happening too much more.
What's interesting is I recently picked up a Dell mini (10v) with Ubuntu pre-installed, and the price was the exact same as the one that came with XP pre-installed.
I just read somewhere that the average cost of a single customer support call to Dell and likes is higher than what they pay MS for OEM Windows. And when selling Linux to 'the masses', more people call support (why doesn't app/game/gadget work, etc). This is one of the main reasons why many vendors selling Linux netbooks stopped and switched to XP after high return and support rates, not some vast conspiracy, but economics.
Charging a customer because they have an OS installed on a computer / notebook is completely wrong. Lately I've been trying to pick up a notebook for school and I've been getting a run around. I've called Dell, Asus and shopped at the all the major Ontario computers stores, all of them come back with the same answer, you need to buy an OS with the notebook. It doesn't matter if I don't want Windows because I don't get a choice, personally I think forcing a customer to buy an OS is horrible idea.
As a Linux user I don't understand why I'd pay someone to hit next 4 times and partitioning a drive which a 5 year old could do. Even when I talked to Dell they only offered to install the "Big" Linux names.
If I'm going to buy a notebook then I want to make sure it comes unbundled and with a clean HDD so I can put what I need onto it. The problem is I can't seem to get any one to send me a blank notebook that I can install a proper OS to, if I spend the 100 dollar software package bundle then I'll wipe the notebook when I get it wasting the 100 dollars, but when I tell the computer store / company I'm going to wipe it so don't sell me the bundle they tell me they can't.
Does anyone else have this problem?
Or do you get the refund and the option to continue to use the OS? Surely Amazon isn't tied all the way back through ASUS to Microsoft's licensing servers.
That's fine if you have no personal integrity. The rest of us might have a problem.
Or do you get the refund and the option to continue to use the OS? Surely Amazon isn't tied all the way back through ASUS to Microsoft's licensing servers.
The point isn't to rob Microsoft. The point is to not pay for something you are not going to use.
It will not activate.
For quite some time now, all major OEMs have been printing "dummy keys" to the COAs. The official method of recovery (a recovery CD or a recovery partition) never asks for the key as the OS is pre-activated. This official recovery method obviously won't install to anything other than the hardware it was shipped with. Usually it is tied to a specific custom BIOS. If you try to install a standard OEM disc with the key found on the COA, you'll find that the installer won't reject it outright (it will allow you to complete the installation) but when you try to activate, it will instruct you to contact Microsoft by phone.
I haven't had experiences with laptops but in cases of desktops you can get MS to issue you a new working key by stating that the PC was repaired and this required a motherboard replacement (hence, you had to use a replacement media and this issue came up). For laptops, not sure what would make MS give you a new key - the license is tied to the piece of hardware it was sold with. You are most likely out of luck and have to contact the manufacturer of the hardware. You could try to bluff the droid on the phone by stating the same thing (motherboard was replaced due to fault) and assume that the key doesn't tell if it was bundled with a laptop.
Before MS and OEMs started doing this, people just wrote down keys off publicly accessible computers and used those to activate standard OEM disc installations. I never quite got the original idea why it was smart to print the valuable product key on a sticker where anyone could snap a picture or write it down, but this was MS we're talking about...
...at least according to this article. The author makes a convincing argument that MS took a bath with that price in order to keep Linux from gaining a toe-hold in the netbook/notebook market, and also credits the threat of Linux Netbook Popularity with the extension of XP to 2010 and modifications of specs on Windows 7. A good read.
Actually, I was asking about the technical side of it, but thanks for making it an ethical issue.
Amazon is just the retailer, but as long as the OEM is still cashing in from the license sale, it's no real progress. It doesn't make a difference if the retailer is giving you the refund, the money is still going to the OEM and as a result, Microsoft. And as long as this happens, they'll still enter corrupt bargaining deals and shut out Linux from mainstream offerings. We need OEMs to give the refund, not the retailer.
So maybe eventually, Amazon will ask the OEMs for a refund for the license. What will the OEMs say? Probably no. Then what will happen? Amazon will probably start refusing the refund as well too. Back at square one, going back to buy my computers from system76, itwasfunwhileitlasted, etc.
In any case, if I were Microsoft, I'd change the wording of the EULA to something like "By purchasing this computer, you consent to pay for all software preinstalled, whatever" to bar these refunds. I don't think it's unenforceable.
I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
Bah, then they should charge more for the Linux support. Simple. I would never call it, but I sure wouldn't mind if their prices were a bit higher to cover the unavoidable cost of supporting another OS. Or not offer software support at all, whatever.
The reason people smell conspiracy is the sudden drop of all Linux, anywhere, as soon as Microsoft reacted to the growing Linux use. They didn't take the netbook market seriously at first, but then overnight you couldn't buy a Linux netbook at a brick and mortar store if you wanted to. That's the conspiracy.
You can't tell me it's economics. There are plenty of ways they could have made money hands over fist. Instead, they let Microsoft kill the whole category.
What about, "I've paid for OEM Windows, but it's not installed on any of my 12 boxen. And now they want me to buy a full version just so I can run it in virtualbox."
Because there is a BIG difference between not having an Operating System and not being tied to a network? I'd love to see how well YOU would fare if they just handed you a cell phone with no OS and a "good luck buddy!" because that is just about as hard as Joe Average would find installing a new OS on a blank PC.
And please don't say "Linux live CDs make it easy!" because that is as much bullshit as MSFT with their "get the facts" crap. Sure, if you research your living ass off and check on every single component of that brand new PC and get lucky that they haven't changed something between rev-1 and rev-2 then it'll work without a hitch, maybe. More likely there is gonna be at least one major PITA piece of hardware that won't have a driver at all, or has a driver that you have to jump through CLI and never will get to work 100% (thanks Broadcom!) or some other royal PITA.
That is why I still sell Windows machines even though I could make more profit with Linux. The odds that my customers will find anything on sale at Walmart, Best Buy, Staples without XP support? About 0%. The odds that they will find something that doesn't work in Linux at the above stores? About 80%, sometimes higher. Installing an OS can be a royal PITA. It is even worse if there isn't a driver for a piece of hardware. The guy who wrote TFA is lucky that ASUS EEEs are well documented and have Linux drivers right there on site. I bet the odds wouldn't be nearly as good if he picked up some Compaq at Walmart. Most Windows users have trouble finding anything in Control Panel. CLI? BWA HA HA HA HA! They'd have a better chance of solving cold fusion than getting anything they do in CLI to work.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
You are absolutely correct. Subaru will not buy back your original shifter. The dealer, however, may very well do so in order to keep your business.
A number of people have pointed out that a few refunds for XP is not a sign that anything is changing. I believe these refunds only show that Amazon has not formed any kind of official policy for this situation. They are simply erring on the side of not pissing people off, because technical people are going to buy more computer products, either from Amazon or someone else who treats them better. I'm sure they are aware of the press.
Sometime soon, I think we will see a more permanent resolution to this customer service issue. I can't say whether it will be progress or not.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."