I've been aware of this holiday for twenty or so years. It's basically impossible to get a refund for an unused Windows license from any of the PC manufacturers.
Front-line employees just aren't equipped to deal with such a request, then when you finally talk to someone who might have the authority to issue that refund - they won't want to. You'll almost have to talk to their legal department to get a refund.
I've even tried getting them to leave the OS uninstalled so I wouldn't need a refund. No dice there.
Fortunately there are some decent PC sellers that won't force a license on you, and some that come with a Linux distribution by default. I was very happy with both my System76 laptop as well as my Dell XPS.