Free Windows 7 Upgrades Have Fee

Terry Olaes

Terry Olaes

I Used to be the [H] News Guy
Joined
Nov 27, 2006
Messages
4,646
PC World has a story about the crusade of a consumer watchdog group against companies that are charging a fee for their supposed “free upgrade” to Windows 7. The fee, which has been as high as $17, is labeled as shipping, handling, and fulfillment fees. The group is afire not because of the fee, but because of the lack of disclosure around said fee.

"The problem is that a lot of this information is hidden, or impossible to find," said Dworsky today. "Disclose it, let the consumer know." …"Someone seems to be profiting," Dworsky charged. "The fees are way beyond the actual cost to fulfill. It would be different if it's a boxed copy with a manual, but it's not."
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Toshiba is charging 30 Euros for the "free" upgrade in my country (Portugal).

ACER is asking for 14 Euros for the very same service over here.
 
$17 seems fine to me... It isn't free to ship/package after all.

Plus, this way you get a computer now, and get the new OS for very little.
 
It costs probably less than $0.20 to ship a DVD (Netflix anyone?). Charging anything over $5 to cover shipping and processing would be robbery.
 
450 said:
$17 seems fine to me... It isn't free to ship/package after all.

Plus, this way you get a computer now, and get the new OS for very little.
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You would pay $17 for S&H for a DVD :confused: Would you also pay $77 to ship a video card?


I thought Apple charging $9.95 to ship SL was bad. Even with the padded envelope and express delivery it wouldn't cost more than a couple of bucks.
 
Read the fucking article.

"To me, whether it's $12.99 or $17.03, the charges are all outrageous," said Edgar Dworsky, the editor of Consumerworld.org and Mouseprint.org. "It's just a single disc they're sending, and with media mail rates, it costs just over a dollar to mail."
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The person is asking for disclosure,

"The problem is that a lot of this information is hidden, or impossible to find," said Dworsky today. "Disclose it, let the consumer know."
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It's a "free" upgrade that companies are making a profit off of from the consumer. It's unethical and more corporate bullshit to fuck over the end user.
 
The person to blame here is the retailer. I am a store manager of an office supply store, and I have trained all of my sales staff to tell the customer that the PC maker may charge nothing or they may charge up to $20. This was the same with Vista. Retailers are aware of this and need to be honest with their customers.
 
Dreaz said:
Read the fucking article.




The person is asking for disclosure,



It's a "free" upgrade that companies are making a profit off of from the consumer. It's unethical and more corporate bullshit to fuck over the end user.
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oh my... corporations are trying to rip off the end user? jesus... I never would have thought such a thing.
 
Lenovo charged me $29.00 for an "upgrade" to vista from Windows XP Pro. Shipped fedEx from Singapore.:rolleyes:
 
ISilva said:
Toshiba is charging 30 Euros for the "free" upgrade in my country (Portugal).

ACER is asking for 14 Euros for the very same service over here.
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Then ACER is a exception. Toshiba, Lenovo, HP, Sony - all have the €29-€30 fee. And i guess the guys from USA will complain even for that $17 :D.
 
Agreed there should be disclosure, and that fee is too high for shipping... as an alternative allow a totally free online digital download of the upgrade...problem solved. We have the internets people!
 
My Dell is eligible for this upgrade. I managed to get Windows 7 Pro x86 and x64 for free from my school, so screw those fees.......
 
i have"free upgrade" with dell... but they will not say what it is until i enter in all the credit card info. No idea if it is wrth it..cause i am almost afraid it will be 80$ by the time they are done with "free".
 
ferrisnox said:
Agreed there should be disclosure, and that fee is too high for shipping... as an alternative allow a totally free online digital download of the upgrade...problem solved. We have the internets people!
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And who pays for the bandwidth to allow all the downloads, problem not solved, when your talking possibly hundreds of thousands of people downloading 2-3.5G of data... it can be a lot.
 
darkpaw said:
It costs probably less than $0.20 to ship a DVD (Netflix anyone?). Charging anything over $5 to cover shipping and processing would be robbery.
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I agree over $5 is a lot and obviously not them doing it as a good dead type service, but it costs MUCH more than $.20 to ship.

They have to not only pay for postage, which is much more than that, but also all the processing and man power to do such. Also I dont know who pays for the media/shipping material itself, but it is more much more than $.20 as well.

You are probably looking at between $2-$4 their cost all said and done depending on how they do it.
 
MrGuvernment said:
And who pays for the bandwidth to allow all the downloads, problem not solved, when your talking possibly hundreds of thousands of people downloading 2-3.5G of data... it can be a lot.
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If only there was a large successful company associated with Windows 7 with alot of money and hight traffic access to the Internet.........
 
ordovician said:
The corrupt and immoral US capitalist system strikes again! And people wonder why the WTC was bombed :rolleyes:
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wow, i think i might have just found the single dumbest person i've ever seen on the [H] forum....

mods would be good to long term ban this moron
 
westrock2000 said:
If only there was a large successful company associated with Windows 7 with alot of money and hight traffic access to the Internet.........
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Just because a company is big does not mean it just pisses funds down the drain.

I hate that when people think just because its a large corporation it should be handouts for all, they would not be around long if that is the way it worked.
 
westrock2000 said:
If only there was a large successful company associated with Windows 7 with alot of money and hight traffic access to the Internet.........
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Sure they got alot of money, but they also didnt get there by giving away everything on download for free.

Consider all of the already free downloads they offer and try to imagine the bandwidth it uses.
 
I bought a Lenovo laptop. I got it with Vista. I hate Vista. I got charged the $17 for the "free" upgrade. Oh well. I love W7 though I'm using it on my desktop.
 
they could have a torrent system setup make it so you have to put in a key to get into the torrent and you cant turn the upload speed off. like alot of people do with that sort of thing.
 
Toshiba was $12 I think for our free upgrade to Win 7.
 
ordovician said:
If windows were linux the updater would just do it automatically :D
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But then bill gates would not get a big cut to buy his aircraft carrier :confused:

http://www.lolcaption.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/water-golf-club.jpg[/image]

soo. ya windows 7 rules
 
Grentz said:
I agree over $5 is a lot and obviously not them doing it as a good dead type service, but it costs MUCH more than $.20 to ship.

They have to not only pay for postage, which is much more than that, but also all the processing and man power to do such. Also I dont know who pays for the media/shipping material itself, but it is more much more than $.20 as well.

You are probably looking at between $2-$4 their cost all said and done depending on how they do it.
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What is strange is that I order stuff online that comes from Honk Kong and it usually has free shipping. Bluetooth Dongle shipped in a padded envelope from HK to USA for $2.87 total. laptop sleeve for $3.99 shipped from HK, Silicon BB 8330 skin for 25cents shipped from HK and a bunch of other items that are really cheap shipped from HK. I can't see how they can make much money from these things.
 
Zepher said:
What is strange is that I order stuff online that comes from Honk Kong and it usually has free shipping. Bluetooth Dongle shipped in a padded envelope from HK to USA for $2.87 total. laptop sleeve for $3.99 shipped from HK, Silicon BB 8330 skin for 25cents shipped from HK and a bunch of other items that are really cheap shipped from HK. I can't see how they can make much money from these things.
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They dont. They hope and expect you to buy lots of the little things to try and make up for it. If you look at the postage on some of those small cheap items, sometimes it is almost all of what you paid.

I can honestly tell you that the prices I said for shipping a CD or Media are not that far out there. I worked for a company that had to do mass media mailings every now and then and it was not that cheap to do. Labor/Materials adds up quick.
 
ordovician said:
AVT: I never said, nor implied, that anyone deserved to die. I think people are putting words into my mouth here, and reading waaaaay too far into what I said, in a negative way. Realize that comment was TONGUE-IN-CHEEK, though there is a huge element of truth to it.
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That many people did not see it as tongue-in-cheek should indicate that you are not very good at communicating tongue-in-cheek. Stick to what you are capable of and maybe you'll actually pull off what you were hoping for.
 
Heh, I haven't read the thread... But this particular scenario I experienced probably takes the cake when it comes to absurd charges. I live in Puerto Rico, a few years ago Microsoft decided to manufacture it's own product discs so it built a plant to do so down here. The plant is in Catano IIRC, which is a stone's throw from where I live (not even 20 min. w/traffic). I'm pretty sure most of the discs they sell in the US are manufactured there.

Anyway, sometime around March I'm granted a Vista Business key & disc by my school but it's 32-bit, so I go to the page MS has set up to order 64-bit media and I place my order... Then I find the automated order system wants to charge me close to $20 to ship it, when it only charges people within the continental US something like $5-10. I figure it was due to some absurd system where they'd ship it from the manufacturing plant to a packaging plant elsewhere, then ship it back to PR, so I paid it.

It wasn't 'till a week later when a DHL courier called me that I realized the thing was coming straight from Catano, PR to my office (again, a 20 min. drive)... The courier was actually a dumbass and had to call to find out where the building is (don't they have GPS... or something?), once I was handed the sleeve w/the CD I noticed that even the invoice said it had shipped directly from Catano. Hell the disc even says "Made in the United States (Puerto Rico)" or something to that effect.

I made a few calls and e-mails to MS to see if I could be reimbursed for the ridiculous $20 S&H charge for what was effectively a 15 min. drive but after a few attemptes I decided it just wasn't worth the effort to keep wasting time on it as I was getting a horrible runaround. :eek:

I dunno why I even ordered the damned thing to begin with, I think a day before it arrived I ended up loaning a Vista Ultimate 64-bit disc and copying it; which is what I ended up using to install Vista Business (which lasted all of 5 months on my system anyway before it was replaced by Win7).
 
There should be a "free" option where you can download an .ISO and burn it.

And if you want a Disc the fee should be $5 maximum.
 
There should be a "free" option where you can download an .ISO and burn it.

And if you want a Disc the fee should be $5 maximum.
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There is and it's called Ubuntu! :)
 
Not all of them have a fee.

I have a friend whose son just got an ACER notebook that is eligible for the WIN 7 upgrade.

I was helping him set it up, and went to the ACER site, ordered the upgrade, and it's being sent N/C.
 
I'm quite certain Microsoft has a Digital Download version available when you check out of your shopping cart after purchasing Windows 7. They've had this option for every software for years now. If you don't want to pay the fee, then download it and burn it yourself.
 
westrock2000 said:
If only there was a large successful company associated with Windows 7 with alot of money and hight traffic access to the Internet.........
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Why should MS foot the bandwidth bill due to a fee that the retailers (Dell, HP etc) are charging?
 
EVERY OT post from here out will get you banned if you have posted OT before in this thread.
 
MrGuvernment said:
And who pays for the bandwidth to allow all the downloads, problem not solved, when your talking possibly hundreds of thousands of people downloading 2-3.5G of data... it can be a lot.
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Microsoft should embrace bittorrent. It would save them an assload of money. I guess nobody there has the smarts to push it forward.

Grentz said:
Just because a company is big does not mean it just pisses funds down the drain.

I hate that when people think just because its a large corporation it should be handouts for all, they would not be around long if that is the way it worked.
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Microsoft gets handouts from the public in the way they charge for their software, so why not return it? Oh yeah, it's Microsoft. lol

Impulse said:
I made a few calls and e-mails to MS to see if I could be reimbursed for the ridiculous $20 S&H charge for what was effectively a 15 min. drive but after a few attemptes I decided it just wasn't worth the effort to keep wasting time on it as I was getting a horrible runaround. :eek:
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I would have seen it to the end just to prove a point. Your story is some front page news for sure.

I know a few people that got these "free" upgrades. All it does is give Microsoft a bad name even though the hidden fees come from the vendor.
 
Grentz said:
I agree over $5 is a lot and obviously not them doing it as a good dead type service, but it costs MUCH more than $.20 to ship.

They have to not only pay for postage, which is much more than that, but also all the processing and man power to do such. Also I dont know who pays for the media/shipping material itself, but it is more much more than $.20 as well.

You are probably looking at between $2-$4 their cost all said and done depending on how they do it.
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math fail. No way it costs NetFlix $2-4 to ship a DVD to me. I get, easily, 10 DVD's a month from Netflix for my $10/month subscription. Are you trying to tell me that it costs NetFlix $20-40 to ship me my 10 DVD's on my $10/month subscription? That's a pretty poor business model my friend.
 
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