A friend of mine was in the market to buy a new PC, but instead ended up getting some bad advice from a second friend and was going to “upgrade” an old computer second friend would give him for free. After I pointed out that for the cost of the upgrades to the outdated machine, my friend could buy a brand new Dell, he has again decided purchasing new system. Unfortunately, second friend has already taken first friend to Best Buy where they bought the upgrades and have installed everything, including the copy of XP (everything else is hardware). Assuming they can uninstall and return all the hardware, which they think they can, we are still stuck with the opened and installed XP copy. I’m assuming we are stuck with it, but I’m wondering if anyone has any advice. I stopped into Best Buy today and the guy I talked to said absolutely no returns of opened software, but he recommended contacting Microsoft to see if they could do something. Is there anything else I can do here? Has anyone had any kind of success taking something like this back? Any suggestions of how to address this or who to talk to to get a refund? Store credit would be perfictly fine if that’s all we could get.
Here’s Microsoft on activating and registering XP. Doesn’t seem to be anything obvious about transfering registration to another person. Elsewhere under Vista help, though, I found mention that it needs to be reactivated if it’s put on another computer.
Did you register and activate it?
Is it XP Pro service pack 2, 32-bit English? I might be willing to buy it from you–I want a copy to install on the second partition on my Mac. PM me if you’re interested.
Edit: Microsoft’s return policy. If you bought it separate from a computer, it goes back to Microsoft, not to the store.
Thanks for the links, they were very helpful, led me to think there’s at least a chance MS may process the refund. I gave the phone number a call, and need to call back duirng business hours.
I do think they installed and activated the software, but don’t know for sure.
I’m pretty sure they have the home version, but I’m uncertain about that as well.
This “no returns on opened software” policy has bitten me several times, from different retailers. You can sometimes get a refund from the manufacturer (and Microsoft is likely to – just tell them you don’t agree to the EULA terms, and their own agreement says they’ll take it back, or used to).
Usually, though, you get: “You have to take it to the store. Our agreement with them says they have to give you your money back.” Then the store will point to the “no returns” policy and say they’ve never heard of the agreement (and the teenager who’s at the register almost certainly hasn’t.)
Some states have implied warranty laws that can basically force them to take it back if it doesn’t work (my usual reason for a return), but who wants to go through that for a low-price piece of software? The threat of it has worked for me once, but usually you get the “I can’t violate store policy, sue us” calling of the bluff.
This is happening to me a LOT lately – as a general rule, almost nothing that says “Vista compatible” on the box actually works in the 64-bit versions of Vista, especially games and anything that touches hardware.
My solution? I now ALWAYS buy software with a credit card. It doesn’t work, I make the token attempt to resolve it with the manufacturer and the retailer, then I call MasterCard/Visa and have them reverse the charges. This costs the retailer the cost of the item plus a fee – maybe if enough people did it, they’d get rid of the rules (or at least be willing to bend them for folks who obviously aren’t just taking the disks home and copying them).