Where is our Vista upgrade?

CONSIDERING THE widely held belief that the Microsoft Vista upgrade program has been an utter mess, we decided to test the system's abilities ourselves.

Whilst not particularly desiring Vista on our lovely Sony Vaio, we thought it best to sign-up to the programme in order to not only see how long the process took, but also in an attempt to get whatever we could out of Microsoft.

It should be noted that Microsoft refused several times to supply this hack with any form of Vista since its release, stating that too many copies have already been sent out, which we're pretty sure is the best way to approach PR with the press over such a critically received product. Nice one guys.

Having performed the necessary steps to request an upgrade from the Moduslink website, via a Sony site link, which included the serial of our laptop and the Windows COA key, on March 7th, we received confirmation of the order on the same day.

Having paid £17.63 for 'postage and packaging' - those DVDs must weigh an awful lot, we started to wonder where the order had got to considering it was now May.

Just over two months later on the 8th of May, we contacted Moduslink in order to question where the order was. We received this rather odd e-mail 8 days later:

Your current status is still only COA validated.
Please send the copy of the proof of purchase of your computer together with your order confirmation number. You can do it by e-mail (PDF only), fax or if you prefer white mail you can send us a copy. The address is listed below. Please do so before the 31st of May.
After approving your order, you will receive a confirmation when your order is being shipped; unfortunately we cannot provide you with a specific shipping date yet. Shipping takes approximately 4 weeks time.

More oddly, the Moduslink website order tracking screen stated that our 'order is approved'.

In this instance the laptop was actually an insurance replacement, and thus didn't have an easily locatable receipt. We contacted Moduslink to attempt to clarify the issue asking how we could provide proof of purchase details.

We then received this e-mail (again, eight days later) in utter contradiction to the previous statement made by Moduslink:

Thank you for contacting the Upgrade Redemption Support Centre.
You don't have to worry anymore about the proof of purchase. We already checked everything.
Due to the huge amount of orders we have received we are unable to give a specific date. Please be informed that you will receive a confirmation once we have shipped your product.
However, your order has been fully processed and validated and payed for.
Should you have further questions, please contact us again.

Quite whether we ever needed proof of purchase or not, is difficult to ascertain.

So, coming up to five months after the official release of Windows Vista, three months after our order, and we're still waiting along with many many other users - even for an estimated date of delivery.

Not just delivery times are affected - the whole process has been shambolic, as credit cards have been refused, proof of purchases have been disappearing, and orders have been cancelled for no reason. Similar tales of woe appear all over internet forums. Whilst we haven't had too many problems, the huge wait is hardly acceptable.

People all over the UK are still waiting for their expected upgrades, months and month after their order.

Speaking to the Guardian several weeks ago, Robert Epstein, Microsoft UK's Group OEM Manager said: "It's getting a lot better now," says "We're getting them out of the door now - they should be shipping within four weeks."

Clearly this is not the case.

Any problems or similar tales, please e-mail us at the author's link provided at the top of this article.

We'll keep you updated, unlike Microsoft and Moduslink. µ

See Also
Pirates release fully cracked Vista install
Dell doesn't ship 64-bit versions of Vista
Vista MSDN RTM impresses
Vista is leaked