trying to get replacement USB transceiver for my wireless keyboard

Lucky you. I just got off the phone calling the number above. I was told that Microsoft Parts Replacement can't actually ship any replacement parts, that the supervisor was too busy to talk to me, and that they wouldn't call me back due to call volumes.

I was told that I could take the keyboard to any electronics store and get a universal transceiver, which I suspect is a complete crock.

My advice: Avoid MS, buy a Logitech with their excelling Unifying adapters.

Microsoft hardware is decent but their service is absolutely appalling. What a waste.

False.  I work refurbishing electronics and reselling them.  I got a few hundred MS keyboard/mouse wireless combos.  These bluetooth dongles from MS will work with ANY MS bluetooth keyboard across many models.  so the "paired" specifically encrypted blah blah reason you posted above simply isnt true.  The RF dongles will also work across models.  As far as replacements go, I cannot get any non branded microsoft dongle to work yet.  I have tried 5 or 6.

Fuel tank... ignition key... the point isn't the metaphor, but rather who's missing whose point. For an accountant and for whom the sole consideration is profit, then, yes; otherwise, the throwaway society has now long been declared both morally and environmentally bankrupt. "[W]why would [I] expect the maker to provide [me] with a replacement?" Well, first off, "provide" is the wrong word—but thank you ("Moderator"), for displaying so well there (and I suppose I must coin a phrase here) "profitential prejudice"

The word is. "sell."

Secondly, it's because doing so is all of 1. possible (indeed, it's easy); 2. practicable; 3. far more environmentally sound; 4. moral; 5. less greedy; (I suppose I could go on here, but,) 6. less insulting to consumer intelligence. Suppose, for the sake of argument, I am indeed wrong and you are right. Soooo bloody what! Customer Relations 101: "The customer is always right"—the very fact that customers believe they are being hard done by here is even-classically-bad business. I'm flabbergasted. Thinking so much demonstrably otherwise, how did Microsoft ever get to be a half-trillion-dollars company? The world's gone bonkers.

Let's face it. Microsoft has for too long now been on the slippery slope of worsening customer relations—and the cost of righting that is less than and with issues such as this one: the cost of acquiescence. But the little blue circle still goes round and round—and the green "searching" bars shuttle back and forth.

(Seriously, folks; I long for the day I see a simple counting-up number—just so I know the system hasn't actually hung. Sometimes it does, you know. Such things are not flaws in production or marketing. They display a flaw in the soul. Microsoft must be right—because it's Microsoft. We are required to trust it. How....

religious!)

I could accept a customer having to buy a new unit because some critical internal part having fried, the whole unit needed to be sent back to the factory to be disassembeled, repaired, repackaged, and returned. The specific item article in question, however, is nothing like that. As orderable and postable as a usb stick, it's a separate physical piece, made on a different assembly line—I strongly suspect, in a completely different factory and by a different sub-contractor. Thus, reason demands it should be, because it could be (re-programmable and) separately acquirable. It's the marketingthat's wrong here.

Even as a child, I envisaged a world knee-deep in cigarette butts. The day the very first plastic bag came out, and even though I was then, too, only a child, I saw disaster looming. (It didn't take long.) Well, people are smoking less now; but, as plastic bags are and even as I type, being outlawed in ever more countries, Microsoft is and by itself alone counteracting such gains by producing junk that shouldn't, so soon, be junk. It really is odd. I thought California was the world's front runner in the environmental race. Is that too only for show? Microsoft, you are and in some sort of weird anti-accomplishment even making California look bad.

I agree with Phrixxos.

It is more like if you buy a car and get one key that cannot be duplicated; if you loose that one key you have to throw out the car.

I'm with you Phrixxos.

The transceiver should be "pairable" with any mouse or keyboard, or you should be able to get a replacement transceiver that will work with your device.

It doesn't make sense to have to throw out the whole set just because a minor part is lost of doesn't work anymore.