At least one PlayStation 3 owner has found the silver lining in Sony’s decision to axe the option to install other operating systems like Linux to the console, obtaining a rather substantial refund from Amazon.com for his PS3 purchase.
European PS3 owner and NeoGAF forum moderator “iapetus” received more than $US100 in credit from Amazon for his original purchase of the console. Why? He filed a complaint with the online retailer that the removal of functionality in the PlayStation 3′s latest firmware update violated a 2002 European law, essentially that his console no longer performed as advertised.
As reported by PlayStation University, that law specifies that goods must “be fit for the purpose which the consumer requires them and which was made known to the seller at the time of purchase”, a responsibility that falls to the seller to uphold, not the manufacturer.
Whether other customers will have similar luck in receiving refunds for their PlayStation 3 consoles, now “Install Other OS”-free is unclear.
PS3 Firmware Update 3.21 of preventing piracy by removing Linux. [NeoGAF via PlayStation University]
matt30822
Friday, April 9, 2010 at 10:14 AMLOL – Didn’t see that coming. Now all of Europe is going to get refunds for all the phat ps3s sold there. And now reatilers will be more hesitant to stock sony products. Win-win :P
Korwin
Friday, April 9, 2010 at 10:32 AMI fail to see the victory in retailers no longer stocking Playstations. A single brand monopoly on the high end console market is the last thing you need.
Heath
Friday, April 9, 2010 at 11:03 AMHere here Korwin. God knows I’d rather be dead than to be stuck with an Xbox or Wii.
James Mac
Friday, April 9, 2010 at 11:04 AMIf you made a decision that suddenly lost your company a tonne of market share… wouldn’t you think about changing your mind?
Korwin
Friday, April 9, 2010 at 12:09 PMI was more referring to the fact that if a single vendor had full control of the market then you would see innovation go out the windows and pricing would no longer be reasonable.
Competition is good for consumers.
andrew
Friday, April 9, 2010 at 12:39 PMi concur with korwin, more competition is always better.
imagine a world where we wouldn’t even have a choice between consoles; now THAT would be disgusting.
Steven Bogos
Friday, April 9, 2010 at 2:17 PMI don’t think that would really be a problem. If there was only one console, they would charge so much for it that everyone would just go back to PC gaming
The Gremlin
Friday, April 9, 2010 at 11:12 AMThe victory would be that Sony may have to re-instate the Linux funcionality to avert disaster. Not that I care for it, BTW
DeeK
Friday, April 9, 2010 at 1:51 PMAlthough, I’m sure you do care about manufacturers removing functionality through firmware upgrades. It’s not a precedent that should be encouraged.
alinos
Friday, April 9, 2010 at 11:27 AMhardly im pretty sure the retailer could do that to the manufacturer they bought them off as well
after all retailers have to purchase the consoles to and the same garuntees of functionality are made to them
Awnshegh
Friday, April 9, 2010 at 11:17 AMAustralian Fair Trading laws are actually very similar having the same statements within the Act. I don’t know how you’d go claiming against it in Oz though.
microUgly
Friday, April 9, 2010 at 1:47 PMI think this law relates to warranty. In which case, I would gladly return my PS3 under warranty, take the cash and buy a slim.
microUgly
Friday, April 9, 2010 at 1:50 PM… although, they aren’t required to refund the full purchase price.
Khuntza
Friday, April 9, 2010 at 7:49 PMThats right.. as per the NSW fair trading site:-
“If the consumer has already had a reasonable amount of use from the goods, there may only be a right to a partial refund.”
AND you’d still have to hand over the console..
If Sony had any brains they would setup some sort of compensation program and give a platinum game or something similar to claimants.. turn a negative into a positive.
Khuntza
Friday, April 9, 2010 at 7:51 PMIts got nothing to do with warranty at all..
Its about products that “do not do the job that the consumer was led to believe they would do”
microUgly
Monday, April 12, 2010 at 8:25 AMYour statement is almost the exact wording used to describe what a warranty covers. If your thinking warranty only covers faults, that is incorrect. A fault is a subset of reasons why a product may not work as advertised. Another reason could be that the product was mis-advertised. Or that the product was crippled through firmware updates–which is the situation we have here. Warranties exist to protect you from this exact situation.
Anon
Friday, April 9, 2010 at 12:00 PMAll that’s going to happen is retailers will change their product description pages to not include the bit out linux. There shant be any more refunds.
James
Friday, April 9, 2010 at 2:37 PMGiven that the current Slim PS3s don’t support Linux anyway, I doubt any retailers need to change any product descriptions.
Any refunds will be for sales of the old models.
Kyall
Friday, April 9, 2010 at 12:51 PMThe danger is this goes back a few years. So anyone in Europe who has bought a PS3 non-slim model since launch can demand a partial refund from the seller.
matt
Friday, April 9, 2010 at 1:35 PMthats a good point.
I was quite pissed of when I got the 40Gig ps3 to find many features missing, not just backwards compatibility, but also SACD playback was gone, with absolutely no indication that it had been taken out.
my biggest issue with this damn “update” mentality was when they added variable pricing to counter strike. it was no longer the game I had bought! they shouldn’t have this much control.