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Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1999 09:34:31 -0700 (MST)
From: "Donna." <donna.s@niestu.com>
Subject: Re: Refund for Unused Preloaded Windows



On 6 February 1997, after researching the then-current market on
notebooks, I decided upon and bought a Canon Innova Book 490 CDS. After
trying to buy it without the preloaded Windows 95 and being refused, I
booted up the virgin machine and was asked if I agreed to the license
agreement.  When I clicked "NO" I was instructed to get a refund from the
manufacturer of the machine.  I spent the rest of February 1997 in e-mail
with a number of Customer Service personnel at Canon, trying to explain
that all I wanted to return for a refund was the operating system, as per
the licensing agreement.

By the end of February I had gone from line grunt to supervisor to
manager, who promised to run it through their Legal Department.  In April
1997 I had to write back to request a followup, and by the end of April he
wrote back to instruct me: return the sealed package of Win95 CD, manual,
and documentation to his attention, and a refund of $99 would be on its
way.  It was very important that the product be sealed in its original
packaging, and I counted myself lucky I wouldn't have to send back the
hard drive to prove that I had never agreed to the license agreement and,
therefore, had never used the Windows partition.  (I'd used FIPS to
repartition the drive and install Linux without disturbing Windows, so the
machine could be used while Canon considered the request, although after
the refund came in I reclaimed the 330Mb Windows had stolen from me.) I'm
sorry to be unclear as to when we received the refund because I became
very sick shortly after that and my personal paper records from that time
period are in disarray, but we deposited it not long after my surgery,
which was in July 1997.  I consider the battle won in three months,
however, since that's how long it took for the agreement to refund to come
through;  the rest was simply delays in coping with the physical aspects
of mailing the package and dealing with the check. 


Donna.
Linux developer
donna.s@niestu.com