For people living in Germany, dealing with bad service is something we must do on a daily basis. Whether we’re shopping, dealing with the German bureaucracy or paying our electricity bill. There are exceptions, though. And until recently, I considered Amazon.de to be one of those exceptions.

When I started looking around for an affordable netbook, Amazon.de wasn’t the cheapest place to start from. But since I had to deal with their customer service before on a number of occasions and usually found their personnel friendly, competent and helpful, I decided to buy a Samsung N130 @anynet from them instead of other retailers. After bad experiences with German electronics chain stores, I made a conscious decision to give up a few points on the price scale for better service.

Here is what happened: While searching through all available netbooks, I found the lack of systems that don’t ship with Windows preinstalled quite annoying. I didn’t intend to use a Microsoft OS this time. Even if I wanted to, I have accumulated a respectable number of various Windows XP versions over the last years, and since I started studying at university, I was able to get most Microsoft software for free through the MSDN Academic Alliance anyway. So I didn’t see the point of paying for yet another Windows system that I wasn’t going to use. Fortunately, I don’t have to!

When you run a new Windows PC for the first time, you will be shown an “End-user License Agreement”, or EULA. As an end-user, you’re free to choose whether you want to use Windows or not. You’re not obliged to agree to the license terms. In fact, if you reject the EULA, you’re entitled to receive a refund equal to the price of the Windows XP license which was included in the product price. Not many people know this, but getting a refund on the Windows-tax has been a hot issue in the Open Source community for a few years now. Amazon UK, Amazon US and various European Amazon branches have refunded Windows licenses in the past. In France, courts usually ruled in favour of consumers in similar cases in the past.

Naturally, I also contacted Amazon’s customer service and asked about a refund for my Microsoft Windows license. One day later, I received a rather snippy E-mail saying that they couldn’t find any information regarding my question and told me to contact Samsung directly instead. Dissatisfying to say the least. As an end-user you’re not obliged to sort out the matter with the manufacturer yourself. You can do so, if you want, but according to German law, the retailer has to handle matters of this nature. And, quite frankly, referring you to other places is just a common tactic of customer services to get people to back off. I therefore gave a bad feedback and asked them to call me personally to sort out the matter. Five minutes later, I was on the phone with a very friendly person who had a much better idea of what I was talking about and promised to look into the issue for me. An hour later, I received an E-mail from the same person saying that it would take about two more days, as she had to refer the issue to her superiors. I agreed and waited, but didn’t receive an answer.

The days after that were very busy and it wasn’t until a few weeks later that I remembered the issue and contacted the customer service again. I first sent another E-mail, which was simply completely ignored this time. So I called the hotline directly and was told by a rather bad-tempered employee that they’re still processing my request and it would take a few more days. I was bascially completely ignored again. But I also admit that my motivation wasn’t too strong to pursue the issue any further, for I felt that the money wasn’t worth all the time and effort. Even though people occasionally report receiving very high refunds, around 40 Euros per license, other sources give lower numbers of around 8-10 Euros.

From a rational perspective, it doesn’t make sense for manufacturers to ship low-priced netbooks with Windows. It only makes their products more expensive. In some cases it adds up to 20% to the original price, which is a lot in that market. Also, Windows uses netbook hardware less efficiently than Linux and hence reduces performance and battery time. My guess is that Microsoft, fearing they would get left behind in the netbook market, offers Windows licenses to manufacturers at below-market prices. But that is just a guess. It’s not my job to figure this out

The issue has been dragging on for about two months now, and before finishing this post, I called Amazon again and asked what happened to my request. This time, an employee took more time to look into the issue, and finally told me that Amazon Germany doesn’t honour refund requests of this type. Their rationale is that they only offer netbooks ‘as-is’, and if the manufacturer decides to ship a netbook with Windows then there is nothing Amazon or the consumers can do about it. They offered to refund the netbook, though, but I declined. As a measure of last resort I contacted Samsung Germany and received the same answer — they won’t refund Windows licenses, but offered that I could return the netbook. Remember that all of this is illegal under German and EU law, but it is unlikely that anybody will go to court to argue over a Windows license worth 10 Euros.

Altogether a pretty disappointing experience. Especially considering that Amazon honoured similar requests of their customers in the United Kingdom or the United States. But it seems like they consider their German customers second-class.

• The OpenSourcer: Getting your Microsoft Tax refunded
• Slashdot: Amazon US refunds Windows License fee
• The Inquirer: French court orders Windows refund

annoyances, customer service, hardware, software