I was talking to a lady at work and she mentioned that she pays £50 a year for a license of W8 on her sons laptop (purchased from Curry's). Is this right? I instantly thought she was getting scammed but through I'd check first. I've only ever brought a license in full for not much more than what she pays a year!
Sounds more like they have signed her up for their "Care Plan" AFAIK there is no such thing as a yearly license fee for any consumer version of Windows (yet).
Yeah, it'll be a care plan. However, they do a lovely job of helping unwary customers arrive at the conclusion that they absolutely have to have it. My sister nearly fell for the same thing, until she phoned me to check and put the sales assistant on the phone. The script fell apart pretty quickly from there on.
Calling out Curry's and PC World sales "assistants" would be a favourite pastime of mine if I could bear going to the shop to do it. The Care Plan actually seems like decent value for the uninitiated though, assuming that they deliver properly on what they promise. I suppose a lot of it would just come under standard warranty obligations as well though.
I have no problems with them providing a care plan, but their methods of peddling it are questionable at best.
I had this with a fridge freezer recently through them: "You should definitely buy the 5 year care plan for x" "But the first 3 years are under warranty anyway so I'm giving you that for only 2 years cover right?" "Erm, yeah. It is a bad deal isn't it."
She's not particularly stupid so I think this is the most likely reason. I didn't really speak to her about it (just sent a brief email even though she sits about 2 metres away) as if it was anything untoward, I didn't want to make her feel uncomfortable/embarrassed (if she had been conned in any way, no one wants to be made look stupid - especially in front of colleagues). Much appreciate the clarification.