A Lenovo business customer in the Czech Republic has posted an account of his attempt to gain a refund for the Windows Vista Business OEM license he received with his laptop.
The gentleman bought a Lenovo ThinkPad R61, which ships with a copy of Vista. However, he intended to use Linux and saw that the End User License Agreement (EULA) for the OEM copy of Vista allowed him to request a refund. The EULA actually states:
By using the software, you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, do not use the software. Instead, return it to the retailer for a refund or credit.
On contacting Lenovo’s technical support desk he had to go through a negotiation process as to what amount of money he was entitled to as a refund for the cost of the license. The final offer was US$130, which seemed acceptable, but there was a catch. In order to get Lenovo to issue the refund to him they insisted he sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) that covered the whole process he had been through with them. That means he wouldn’t be able to talk about how he applied for a refund, got one and how much he got.
He decided not to take them up on the offer due to the insistence of the NDA. Instead he wrote an account of what happened and posted it on the AbcLinux.cz forums. His reward for making that decision was a US$130 author royalty given by the owners and editors of the forums covering what he has lost from rejecting Lenovo’s offer.
Read more at ABCLinuxu.cz
Matthew’s Opinion
Lenovo clearly don’t want news getting out that they are offering US$130 refunds on their hardware purchases. If they had just issued the refund then I doubt many people would have known. By enforcing an NDA the cat is out of the bag and I’m sure next week they will be getting a few phone calls from people demanding a refund and not put off by the NDA.
The result of this should be Lenovo, and other manufacturers, looking more seriously at offering alternate operating systems at time of purchase. It would clearly save them and customers a lot of time, hassle, and some money if Vista isn’t the OS they want to use.
Clearly that is not something Microsoft would like to happen as pre-installed copies of Vista are what gets the company that 90%+ market share. I’m sure their incentives to manufacturers make that very clear and it could be painful for some to make the switch. Getting inundated with US$130 refund demands may be more painful, however.
Tags: video, game, gaming, sat-nav
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