[Gllug] Evesham/Linux for a small business

[Martin A. Brooks]

At 05:39 06/11/2003 +0000, you wrote:
>I persisted in demanding a refund, and explained that the OFT was 
>particularly
>interested in "software bundling".....  After three hours on the phone, at
>their expense, they agreed to refund £60 if I returned the "rescue disk" and
>reformatted the hard drive.  A couple of days later, they refunded £60 to my
>Credit Card.

Excellent :)

You can actually take this one step further, if you're feeling brave.

I would have pointed out that there was no way I could buy a copy of 
Windows XP for £60, and I would have asked them to explain why it wasn't 
the full cost of the OS as available, for example, from PC world.

They will, of course, say that they buy in bulk and have agreements with 
Microsoft and so forth. You then simply say "oh, so I can buy a copy of 
Windows XP from you for £60 can I?"

If they say no, they're bundling. i.e. forcing you to pay for something you 
neither need nor want when you make another purchase.  If they say yes, 
well, you just got yourself a nice little earner on ebay :)

I don't think they can refuse to support the hardware either.  A computer 
is a general purpose piece of equipment and the warranty you have is with 
the hardware - the software is supplied "with no warranty" of thereabouts, 
it says so in the EULA.  They may supply support for a certain piece of 
software running on it, but they _have_ to support the hardware as 
well.  So a disk failing in your laptop running Debian should be no more 
difficult to replace than one running under Windows.

Regards


Martin A. Brooks, Clues Ltd.
http://www.clues.ltd.uk/


-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at linux.co.uk
http://list.ftech.net/mailman/listinfo/gllug