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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.
(Score: 1) by Zappy on Saturday October 25 2014, @01:11PM
The policy is void in EU, warranty protection is quite strong here.
But I usually avoid confrontation. As a personal policy I stopped telling any supplier I use Linux when I need warranty or support.
The problem is almost never caused or in anyway due to Linux so it is not relevant, adding this information only gives the supplier an escape clause for not fixing their shit.
I will happily "reboot" my Windows PC when the internet supportdesk asks me and respond after a defendable delay to tell them that this did not solve the problem :-)
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Saturday October 25 2014, @06:20PM
thank you for that! i had a good laugh ;-)
How DO you mime the reboot of a machine?
(Score: 2) by el_oscuro on Saturday October 25 2014, @08:00PM
Verizon has given me advice to edit settings in my "registry" when I called in about no carrier signal on the DSL router.
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(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday October 29 2014, @05:47PM
Hah, I had to call Verizon just the other day:
Tech: "And what kind of system are you using? Windows, or Mac OS?"
Me: (oh great) "Linux."
Tech: "... ok ... so ... Windows, right?"
Me: "Yeah, sure."
Then he goes "I'm going to run some tests from our end" and then it was fixed...never even told me to reboot or do anything at all with my laptop. So that whole exchange was rather pointless.
Glad he didn't ask about my router -- OpenWRT set up with multiple VLANs and a captive portal...trying to explain all that probably would have made his head explode ;) Or more likely reply with "Please connect the supplied router"...