4 ms·

Manufacturers used to offer the possibility of requesting to get a refund for the unused MS Windows license. Did that possibility go away?

• schoen 13y ago
  I was involved in some Windows Refund stuff in California. Many manufacturers later added language to their marketing and packaging claiming that bundled software was an integral part of their product and could not be returned separately, nor resold separately. If you tried to return it separately for a refund (as the Windows EULA text seemed to suggest), they would say that that was only an option if you returned the entire product. So, my impression is that it's actually become dramatically more difficult for most manufacturers because they're specifically trying to prevent customers from getting a refund just for bundled copies of Windows. I've imagined that some of these policies might violate (or be unenforceable because of) antitrust, consumer protection, or copyright laws in some jurisdictions, but I don't know of specific cases where they've been challenged on these bases or what the results were. I still look forward to a future in which the price of proprietary operating systems is actually able to operate as a disincentive for people to buy them.