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Currys/PC World (UK) Voids Warranty on Hardware if Buyer Installs Linux

posted by n1 on Saturday October 25 2014, @07:55AM   Printer-friendly
from the is-it-still-1998? dept.

gewg_ writes:

Roy Schestowitz notes:

Today I learned something somewhat shocking. A policy which I believed was some kind of controversial fringe policy from way back in the days of Vista is still in place, and it's in place right here in the UK. Currys/PC World is totally overzealous with its GNU/Linux-hostile policy, which is almost definitely dictated by non-technical management, maybe in collusion with Microsoft.

[...] an old desktop of mine died on me and I sought a replacement immediately (within the hour). [...] Currys pretty much devoured the competition [...and] has an outrageous policy regarding warranty.

As it turns out--and this was confirmed to us by multiple people (in multiple PC World stores) after arguing for more than half an hour--once you install GNU/Linux (even if it's dual boot with Windows) no damage to hardware would be covered by the warranty (keyboard, screen, and so on). One of the sellers, who follows the Linux Action Show, regretted this but also defended this policy because it's imposed from above.

No matter how ridiculous a policy it is, changes to [zeros] and ones on the hard-drive (to remove spyware), according to Currys, would void the warranty on what clearly is not connected to [the pre-installed] software. [...] we decided we just couldn't do business at PC World. The company is inherently GNU/Linux-hostile. Avoid Currys.

 
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by FatPhil on Saturday October 25 2014, @09:13AM

    by FatPhil (863) <{pc-soylent} {at} {asdf.fi}> on Saturday October 25 2014, @09:13AM (#109849) Homepage
    3 words: Citizens Advice Bureau.
    3 more words: Small Claims Court.

    Agree, this is so obviously against the sale of goods act that they haven't got a leg to stand on. The computer willingly ran every single opcode that was fed it. It installed linux, you only provided it the medium from which it read the bytes.
    --
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  • (Score: 1) by Whoever on Saturday October 25 2014, @04:37PM

    by Whoever (4524) on Saturday October 25 2014, @04:37PM (#109978) Journal

    Don't forget Trading Standards.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 25 2014, @05:54PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 25 2014, @05:54PM (#110018)

    The computer willingly

    Did AI get invented while I was asleep? Computers aren't sentient and don't have a will. They're basically slaves without the capability to say no. The computer didn't "willingly" do anything, the user forced it to. Thus, it is on the user if they run incompatible code.