NHS employee? Bought MS office for £8.95? Time to uninstall...

BikerEd

If you were one of the NHS employees who bought a copy of Microsoft Office for £8.95 as part of the Home User Programme, then unfortunately you now need to stop using the software and uninstall it. This is because the NHS licensing deal with Microsoft has ended.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/16/office_delete/
https://www.microsoft.com/uk/nhs/pages/licensing/post_ea_hup.aspx

I can imagine a lot of NHS employees will be angry, thinking that they bought the software instead of merely "renting" it.

Time to get Open Office.....

m5rcc

If the offer is too good to be true, it often is. £9 for a full version was never going to happen.

BikerEd

m5rcc wrote: »

If the offer is too good to be true, it often is. £9 for a full version was never going to happen.

It was a full version in terms of functionality, just not in terms of time.

m5rcc

Exactly - you bought a trial

alanrowell

BikerEd wrote: »

I can imagine a lot of NHS employees will be angry, thinking that they bought the software instead of merely "renting" it.

Our company offers the same but they emphasise that if the agreement ends then the software would have to be uninstalled.

BikerEd

m5rcc wrote: »

Exactly - you bought a trial

Not at all. A trial is for a short-term fixed period. This was a licence to use the software until the licensing agreement ended. Two completely different things. I suspect most people would understand what a trial is, but few will have understood (or even been told) the small print of the NHS deal.

magpiecottage

This sounds like a contract that, in effect, says "you can buy this and use it until we tell you that you can't use it any more".

In theory, that could happen the day after you bought it so that would seem to put an imbalance in favour of Microsoft and, since it is for use at home, seems make it an unfair term in a consumer contract.

If so then the term is not legally binding on the consumer.

BikerEd

magpiecottage wrote: »

This sounds like a contract that, in effect, says "you can buy this and use it until we tell you that you can't use it any more".

In theory, that could happen the day after you bought it so that would seem to put an imbalance in favour of Microsoft and, since it is for use at home, seems make it an unfair term in a consumer contract.

If so then the term is not legally binding on the consumer.

Except that it isn't a consumer contract, it is a business contract. It is not available to the general public, only to employees of a specific organisation - in this case the NHS. Other companies such as BT have similar deals. As such I don't think a NHS employee would have any comeback - not least because their loss is just £8.95.

I can't remember the small print of the original deal, but having recommended several NHS friends to take advantage of it, I'm sure I would have remembered seeing a glaring gotcha like this had it been documented in an obvious way.

EDIT: The offending clause is buried as 13.b on this page.

Farway

So, I guess all NHS employees will be uninstalling, NOT

fwor

Does it still continue to function?

If so, I would suggest that any NHS employee using it continue to do so until Microsoft contact them directly about the change of licence status (they never will, provided you choose not to install their "Genuine Advantage" tool).

ehlo

Is the actual thing any different from a retail product? (With a different PID)
Even if it is I doubt Microsoft will do anything about it

I've certainly moved on anyway to 2007 through technet