Fighting for a Vista rebate. Because somebody has to.

Some people suffer the insufferable for piece of mind and for the good of all of us who want to live safe, comfortable lives.

The mysterious uncle_benji is one of those people.

Ben, as I’ll call him here, has endured some sort of special hell to wrestle a $200 refund from Hewlett-Packard after deciding he would downgrade Windows Vista to XP on his new laptop (purchased at Best Buy).

The customer service nightmare is detailed here, and I strongly suggest you read it in its entirety. Ben actually lived this. Feel his pain.

My favorite part of this is when an HP senior case manager writes Ben that “Microsoft has stopped issuing licenses for HP as they are going to stay with Vista.”

Wait? “Stay with Vista?” So, what, Microsoft almost gave up? Cat’s out of the bag, folks.