OEM license legitimacy

[Anilkumar247]

Hello
I am a small PC shop owner.
We assemble and sell PC to small client base.
We purchased a few OEM license keys for installing and giving to our clients .
I myself used 4 of them and am using them in my personal PC's for about a year now.
Havent faced any issues till now, OS says activated , etc.

Upon searching i found that most of the people say that the keys are illegal and are not valid ones.

Would like to know WHY and HOW ?
IF they were illegal, why didnt the MS customer care executive told me that they are illegal when i tried to get eh ISO of hte windows and while he helped me during activation via phone and the CHAT.

IF i give it to a client on the fresh PC that we assembled using parts , is it illegal ?
Will it affect our clients in any way?

Apologies for the long post.

Thank you

 

[sizzling]

A lot depends where you are buying them from? If bought from a reputable source then you are fine with OEM

 

[little_me]

Terms "Illegal" and "OEM" dont really fit together as long as you buy them from legitimate source (and thus they'd cost closer to 90 to 100 USD) as sizzling said.

Where some might have that idea is that OEM keys have been meant for what you do, build computer on your own (Original Equipment Manufacturer) and then install windows, sell to client, done.
It doesn't really matter if you build single computer for yourself or for sale, difference between OEM and Retail is pretty much who handles the support, You or Microsoft.

It also used to be tied to the hardware (pretty much motherboard) before windows 10, now it can be tied to Microsoft account and used on different computer too, making the difference even smaller.

So since you use OEM, your clients might call/email you about problems/errors, that is pretty much extent of it.

 

[Anilkumar247]

We bought them from http://www.play-asia.com/ Are they good ?
Which places can be considered as good to purchase OEM license ?
We require about 4-5 license every week to give to the PC we make.
ANd we give them the basic support when they need, rather than making them contact MS for support.

 

[sizzling]

I don't know Play Asia but the price of £15 for Widows 10 OEM tells me it is not legit. I have seen lots of explanations of how these place get hold of these types of key. What I do know is Microsoft can and do deactivate licences which breach the end user licence agreement. They are genuine keys but sold in an illegal way, therefore it can take Microsoft a long time to work out which keys are a problem, they might never figure it out.

 

[little_me]

At their prices? pretty much shady stuff. Real copies are not 18EUR each.

Said licenses are most likely "stolen" or "borrowed" from bigger companies pools of licenses, which might get deactivated once/if they notice that some of them are already used.

Yes, they could activate
Yes, they could deactivate on their own in next 6 months to 3 years or.. never, you don't know.
Yes, According to license agreement, windows activating does NOT mean that your copy is legal. It just means that no one has complained about their copy being stolen/not activating once they tried it.

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

More here: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-3305627/windows-pro-deal-playasia.html

 

[Rexper]

A general rule to when buying operating systems to decipher legitimacy, if it's too good to be true, it isn't. They're normally bought at atleast $80

 

[Anilkumar247]

Thank you all for the help and explaining.

 

[USAFRet]

We bought them from http://www.play-asia.com/ Are they good ?
Which places can be considered as good to purchase OEM license ?
We require about 4-5 license every week to give to the PC we make.
ANd we give them the basic support when they need, rather than making them contact MS for support.

For purchasing in that volume?
Contact Microsoft directly. They may be able to cut you a deal.
Rather than you going out and distributing keys that are likely to cause your customers issues down the road.