On October 5, 2011, I decided to upgrade my computer to Windows 7. I looked online, and found the best price for a family pack upgrade (which allows 3 computers to be upgraded) was from a company called OnlineDigitalItems.com. I purchased a download version, and loaded it up on my computer. Everything was hunky dory until about 2 weeks ago. Suddenly, my screen was black, and I had a message from Microsoft that my copy of Windows 7 was not genuine!
Attached to this note was a link to follow to validate my copy of Windows. I followed the link. After a few hours, I finally got to a place where a phone number was revealed. I called the number and spoke to a nice gentleman from someplace across two seas. He had me do a few things, then he did a few things, and finally he said my copy was, indeed, counterfeit. He said my first course of action was to contact the retailer and give them a chance to remedy the situation. I thanked him, and sent an email off to OnlineDigitalProducts.com. They did not respond.
Today I am working a split shift, and decided to take some time to get back with Microsoft. I spent a bunch of time going through the required hoops to garner the well buried phone number (800-642-7676 if you need it), and called back. The nice lady from the great subcontinent did exactly the same things as the first gentleman did 2 or so weeks earlier, except this time she inserted a step where I needed to re-boot my computer. Silly me, calling tech support from my Magic Jack phone! She gave me a case number after I asked for one, and we hung up and I re-booted. This only succeeded in allowing the Microsoft person to get rid of me for a while.
I called back (from my cell phone this time) and proceeded through the murky waters of their automated voice response system, answering the same questions posed by the electronic screener before finally exhausting its database and being transferred to the land of tigers and telephone call centers once again.
The gentleman on the other end forced me to go through everything I had already done twice now. I told him I had a case number, and he took it, and then chastised me for calling it a case number. It was, after all, only a reference number. Any information referenced by the reference number was summarily ignored.
Finally He informed me that my software was, indeed, counterfeit, and I would need to report it to Microsoft. Who had I been talking too these so many hours, if not Microsoft? I was directed to a page that had an option to report counterfeit software. It is 6 screens long. About half way through page 5, I got an error message stating that the webpage had expired. I had to start all over again. I typed like a madman, wanting to, at all costs, beat the timer. Evidently I succeeded, and the report was filed. It will be interesting to see if Microsoft does anything at all about this. If not, I am prepared to explore Linux.
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