It was slashdotted at the beginning. I normally don't karma-whore, but after reading the article, someone specifically said it was down, and I still had it open in a browser, so I posted it.
HOWTO: Getting a Windows Refund in California Small Claims Court Posted on Wednesday, July 30, 2003 by Steve Oualline
Thanks to good records and a Small Claims judge, Steve Oualline got a $199 refund for his unused copy of Microsoft Windows XP. One Linux user's story shows how to establish a good refund case.
Getting a Microsoft Windows refund from a manufacturer is seldom easy to do. In this article, I describe some techniques you can use to get your refund, including how to deal with the manufacturers (and all their excuses) and going to small claims court.
The first step to getting a refund is to ask for on. In most every case, you immediately hit a wall of stupidity and evasion when you do this. Dealing with this part properly is important, though, because you are building a record for the court case that may follow. Your job is to be as reasonable as possible and to make them look as dumb, inflexible and unreasonable as possible.
It's important to know what excuses the manufactures will come up with and how to counter them.
Excuse: You aren't entitled to a refund.
Answer: Then why did the software come with a license that said I was. Isn't the license a binding contract?
Excuse: Contact Microsoft about the refund.
Answer: The license said contact the manufacturer. That's you. Why should I contact Microsoft when they said to contact you?
Excuse: The software comes bundled with the hardware and can't be separated.
Answer: Then why did you give me a license that said they could?
Excuse: We'll give you a refund, but not for the retail price.
Answer: I paid retail for the computer and the software.
Excuse: The software is only worth $10.
Answer: Okay. Send me the check.
Although this doesn't look like it, you've won a major victory with these words--that check is written evidence of the fact that the manufacturer owes you a refund. If you go to court, you don't have to establish that the company owes you something. All you have to do is establish the amount.
But before you do that, you should follow up with the company. There are several ways of doing this.
Follow up #1: I got your check for $10. You say Windows XP costs only $10, so I'd like to buy 100 copies please. To whom do I make out the check for $1000?
You won't sell me Windows XP for $10? I'll have to pay $199 for it? Then that means the check you sent me is too low. Please send me a check for the full amount.
Follow up #2: I got your check for $10. But your $10 price is far lower that the retail price of Windows XP ($199). Because of the vast difference in the amounts, I'm going to have to ask you for a copy of your purchase contract with Microsoft so I can verify the price.
You can't verify the price. Well, I can only find one documented price and that's $199. You'll have to pay that amount or document your price.
One company tried this excuse with me. When I asked for documentation, the customer service representative said, "I don't have access to price information".
"Then how did you come up with the $10 price figure?"
"I just know it's the right amount."
"So what you are really doing is guessing. Well, my guess is the software is worth $1,000,000. Tell you what, let's split the difference. Send me a check for $500,005."
Excuse: We'll give you a refund but that applies to only Microsoft Windows, not the other bundled software.
Answer: No problem. Please provide me with a copy of all the other software on another disk so I can install it under Linux using the Wine program.
In all of these cases, follow up the phone conversation with a written letter describing what was said and why you're unhappy with it. Remember you are creating a record for the judge.
At some point in this process you'll either get your refund (rare) or you'll realize
and *good enough* is enough for most users, especially home users, because I think i've heard about 90% of Word users only use the basic 10% functionality. The rest of the features are geared towards the other 10%.
I don't know how true it is, but to the average person who writes a few letters, surfs the web, and checks email, open office is a perfect fit. IMHO of course.
My wife just got a new computer for her to use, where most of her use is writing on her novel. The new box from Dell only had MS Works on it. I put Open Office on there for her instead. She was skeptical at first, but Open Office opened up her 200 page word document, and the only problem was the page numbers were screwed up. After resetting those, she was up and running. She has found it to be fairly intuitive, and good enough for what she uses it for, and is happy with it.
However, I can see problems where people who use the more advanced features, such as macros and access is probably not going to like Open Office. But I do think there is an audience for this software, and over time that audience will grow as the feature set grows.
If we don't have a secure country with secure borders then domestic and social problems don't matter. If terrorists are able to strike out at any time, we have bigger problems than welfare and funding the national endowment for the arts.
Yeah, and none of these were in self-defense, right? I mean, Bin Laden wasn't in afghanistan, right? Iraq didn't do anything to deserve 1991, right? Oh yeah, i forgot, it was the oil. and Libya was an innocent victim of our agression right? They never did anything to us first.
I'm not saying we're always doing the right thing. But to say that all that resulted in these actions was killing innocent people, your full of shit.
and Bosnia was us going in to save muslims from genocide. again, solving the worlds problems...us. Just like now with Liberia. If we go in there, are you going to add that to the list? The whole freaking world wants us to go in there to solve it. But you commies will just list that as aggression.
And why is it our responsibility to spend every penny we have solving the rest of the world's problems? I thought other countries wanted us to stay out of their part of the world.
Welcome. Knoppix and Mandrake are two great distro's for beginners. After you've learned a bit, and want to learn more, I'd suggest trying another distro, like debian, redhat, or gentoo. Good luck...
-Kevin
I agree. I think they should just release the hack. Trying to blackmail MS like this is just going to be laughed at by MS, instead of being taken seriously. Though, I imagine any attempt to crack Xbox encryption like this is just laughed away anyways.
On my last two ohio tax returns, I think I just put down that I bought a couple hundred dollars worth of stuff, to pay 15 or 20 in state sales tax. I figured its better than having a 0 on my tax return, though I've heard (from a CPA friend) that they don't audit that at all. They don't expect you to go through all your receipts for that part of your return.
web development tool that is tightly integrated for creation and management such as FrontPage or Dreamweaver
I have used Quanta for over a year now, and it is a great tool for creation and management of a website, especially with kiofish now a part of KDE.
You might only want to do this too, if you don't plan on getting DSL. in my area, DSL is much better than cable (cable company sucks), so I can't do that.
However, I have had an answering machine answer every "Out of Area" call since I moved, 9 months ago. I was getting 6 or 7 each day, now I only get one a night. I guess they finally realize that I won't pick up the phone.
Re:BUSH administration will always choose marketer
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It was slashdotted at the beginning. I normally don't karma-whore, but after reading the article, someone specifically said it was down, and I still had it open in a browser, so I posted it.
HOWTO: Getting a Windows Refund in California Small Claims Court
Posted on Wednesday, July 30, 2003 by Steve Oualline
Thanks to good records and a Small Claims judge, Steve Oualline got a $199 refund for his unused copy of Microsoft Windows XP. One Linux user's story shows how to establish a good refund case.
Getting a Microsoft Windows refund from a manufacturer is seldom easy to do. In this article, I describe some techniques you can use to get your refund, including how to deal with the manufacturers (and all their excuses) and going to small claims court.
The first step to getting a refund is to ask for on. In most every case, you immediately hit a wall of stupidity and evasion when you do this. Dealing with this part properly is important, though, because you are building a record for the court case that may follow. Your job is to be as reasonable as possible and to make them look as dumb, inflexible and unreasonable as possible.
It's important to know what excuses the manufactures will come up with and how to counter them.
Excuse: You aren't entitled to a refund.
Answer: Then why did the software come with a license that said I was. Isn't the license a binding contract?
Excuse: Contact Microsoft about the refund.
Answer: The license said contact the manufacturer. That's you. Why should I contact Microsoft when they said to contact you?
Excuse: The software comes bundled with the hardware and can't be separated.
Answer: Then why did you give me a license that said they could?
Excuse: We'll give you a refund, but not for the retail price.
Answer: I paid retail for the computer and the software.
Excuse: The software is only worth $10.
Answer: Okay. Send me the check.
Although this doesn't look like it, you've won a major victory with these words--that check is written evidence of the fact that the manufacturer owes you a refund. If you go to court, you don't have to establish that the company owes you something. All you have to do is establish the amount.
But before you do that, you should follow up with the company. There are several ways of doing this.
Follow up #1: I got your check for $10. You say Windows XP costs only $10, so I'd like to buy 100 copies please. To whom do I make out the check for $1000?
You won't sell me Windows XP for $10? I'll have to pay $199 for it? Then that means the check you sent me is too low. Please send me a check for the full amount.
Follow up #2: I got your check for $10. But your $10 price is far lower that the retail price of Windows XP ($199). Because of the vast difference in the amounts, I'm going to have to ask you for a copy of your purchase contract with Microsoft so I can verify the price.
You can't verify the price. Well, I can only find one documented price and that's $199. You'll have to pay that amount or document your price.
One company tried this excuse with me. When I asked for documentation, the customer service representative said, "I don't have access to price information".
"Then how did you come up with the $10 price figure?"
"I just know it's the right amount."
"So what you are really doing is guessing. Well, my guess is the software is worth $1,000,000. Tell you what, let's split the difference. Send me a check for $500,005."
Excuse: We'll give you a refund but that applies to only Microsoft Windows, not the other bundled software.
Answer: No problem. Please provide me with a copy of all the other software on another disk so I can install it under Linux using the Wine program.
In all of these cases, follow up the phone conversation with a written letter describing what was said and why you're unhappy with it. Remember you are creating a record for the judge.
At some point in this process you'll either get your refund (rare) or you'll realize
Visit mirrors to find a site close to you.
http://people.redhat.com/arjanv/2.5/
These files are also setup as an apt repository if you read the readme.txt file.
Not sure if they will work with the beta.
and *good enough* is enough for most users, especially home users, because I think i've heard about 90% of Word users only use the basic 10% functionality. The rest of the features are geared towards the other 10%.
I don't know how true it is, but to the average person who writes a few letters, surfs the web, and checks email, open office is a perfect fit. IMHO of course.
My wife just got a new computer for her to use, where most of her use is writing on her novel. The new box from Dell only had MS Works on it. I put Open Office on there for her instead. She was skeptical at first, but Open Office opened up her 200 page word document, and the only problem was the page numbers were screwed up. After resetting those, she was up and running. She has found it to be fairly intuitive, and good enough for what she uses it for, and is happy with it. However, I can see problems where people who use the more advanced features, such as macros and access is probably not going to like Open Office. But I do think there is an audience for this software, and over time that audience will grow as the feature set grows.
If we don't have a secure country with secure borders then domestic and social problems don't matter. If terrorists are able to strike out at any time, we have bigger problems than welfare and funding the national endowment for the arts.
Yeah, and none of these were in self-defense, right? I mean, Bin Laden wasn't in afghanistan, right? Iraq didn't do anything to deserve 1991, right? Oh yeah, i forgot, it was the oil. and Libya was an innocent victim of our agression right? They never did anything to us first.
I'm not saying we're always doing the right thing. But to say that all that resulted in these actions was killing innocent people, your full of shit.
and Bosnia was us going in to save muslims from genocide. again, solving the worlds problems...us. Just like now with Liberia. If we go in there, are you going to add that to the list? The whole freaking world wants us to go in there to solve it. But you commies will just list that as aggression.
And why is it our responsibility to spend every penny we have solving the rest of the world's problems? I thought other countries wanted us to stay out of their part of the world.
Welcome. Knoppix and Mandrake are two great distro's for beginners. After you've learned a bit, and want to learn more, I'd suggest trying another distro, like debian, redhat, or gentoo. Good luck... -Kevin
I agree. I think they should just release the hack. Trying to blackmail MS like this is just going to be laughed at by MS, instead of being taken seriously. Though, I imagine any attempt to crack Xbox encryption like this is just laughed away anyways.
That only applies in criminal cases. This was a civil case, and you are responsible for your own representation.
On my last two ohio tax returns, I think I just put down that I bought a couple hundred dollars worth of stuff, to pay 15 or 20 in state sales tax. I figured its better than having a 0 on my tax return, though I've heard (from a CPA friend) that they don't audit that at all. They don't expect you to go through all your receipts for that part of your return.
web development tool that is tightly integrated for creation and management such as FrontPage or Dreamweaver
I have used Quanta for over a year now, and it is a great tool for creation and management of a website, especially with kiofish now a part of KDE.
You might only want to do this too, if you don't plan on getting DSL. in my area, DSL is much better than cable (cable company sucks), so I can't do that. However, I have had an answering machine answer every "Out of Area" call since I moved, 9 months ago. I was getting 6 or 7 each day, now I only get one a night. I guess they finally realize that I won't pick up the phone.
*cough* I know that Clinton didn't take any contributions from Enron , right?
My version of Konqueror (KDE 3.1) doesn't crash when I go to that page though... -Kevin