[gustavo_duarte]

Very cool. Had it been Paypal, they'd want a picture of a burned X-Box surrounded by crying children to prove authenticity.

MS has been controversial commercially, but socially I think they've done a decent job of "Don't Be Evil", for example in their treatment of Gay and Lesbian employees - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_and_Lesbian_Employees_at_Mi...

[jf]

For what it's worth:

As a Microsoft employee, I'm also strongly encouraged to donate to the charities of my choice. Microsoft will match all of my donations, dollar for dollar, with no preferences (I know people who've had Microsoft match their donations to the EFF and FSF).

[joelhaasnoot]

Worked at a non-profit for a while, and we had quite a few free licenses that were bought at the MS company store and then donated to us. They were a little tricky in their conditions, but nothing beats free for expensive licences.

[jf]

For the record: http://techsoup.org is an organization that makes it easy for non-profits to get cheap/free software licenses and hardware. They've worked out deals with many major companies, not just Microsoft.

Here's a list of their most popular software that you can get through TechSoup: http://www.techsoup.org/stock/Default.asp?cg=lnav&visit=...

[jeremyarussell]

I laughed out loud on that one (made the guy next to me jump.)

I gotta say, good PR or not, easier or not, the email saying we noticed our own mistake, let something good come out of it, really does make me like them a bit more.

[GigabyteCoin]

PayPal once refunded me out of their own pocket for a seller's obvious mistake. This was for about $30 USD and only a few months ago. I was blown away.

PayPal isn't all bad.

[fakelvis]

I would like to hear the other side of this story, though.

From what I understand, sellers are the ones that get stiffed in almost all PayPal disputes. As a buyer, I'm not surprised you had a good experience.

Note: As both a seller and a buyer, I've never had a problem with PayPal.

[eridius]

Are you sure they didn't charge the seller that $30? That seems to be PayPal's standard practice.

[GigabyteCoin]

Quite sure.

I believe PayPal refunded me simply so I wouldn't sue them... but who knows?

Here is the lowdown...

I purchased ~10 1500W rated ATX power cords on ebay from a seller in china.

I fired up 2-3 servers and the cords literally started smoking/melting under ~300 watts of load.

Upon dissection of the cords, it was obvious they were fakes and would never be able to stand 1500 watts of load. They were all comprised of hundreds of 30+ gauge wires.

Long story short... I had to pay for shipment back to china in order to receive a refund.

I wrote to paypal in my furious state, explaining how the seller had nearly burnt down my home (what if the cables went as soon as I stepped out for a smoke?)... and they refunded me literally out of their own pocket.

They said [sic] ... "typically you must return the items but in this case we will refund the payment for you".

I wrote them back wishing the seller would have been reprimanded some how or have had to felt the loss but that was the last I heard from them.