Iomega Settles Zip Drive Suit (With Rebates)

JPM, III writes: "Excite news reports that Iomega Corp. will give rebates to millions of customers as part of a settlement of a class-action lawsuit that claimed its Zip drives are defective. U.S. customers who bought a Zip drive from a store or authorized manufacturer between January 1, 1995, and March 19, 2001, will be entitled to rebates worth up to $40 for various Iomega products. The settlement comes out of a lawsuit filed in Delaware in 1998 that claimed that Zip drives had a manufacturing flaw that often caused the drives and disks to fail. (Read an April 1998 Computer Link Magazine article about the 'Click of Death' deficiency.) My question: Where do I go to get my rebate?" Does being allowed to settle such a suit with rebates worth less than the cost of a zipdrive strike anyone as a little odd? (Maybe the cigarette companies should have tried this tactic.)

Comments

Re:Good ol' iomega.

[Sethb]

Honestly, that's what you get for buying a drive that transfers data through your printer port. That port was designed for PRINTERS, not for removable media. Spend a little bit more and get an internal IDE version, the external USB version, or god forbid, a SCSI Zip. You'll be much happier.

Back in '97, I bought the external Zip Plus. It lets me use SCSI on my box here at home, and if I needed to, I could hook it up via parallel to a box I was working on. Fortunately, I didn't have to do that very often...
---

Re:so object

[pod]

I think the lawyers' cut (what is it these days? 30%?) should consist of Iomega discount coupons, seeing as they fought so hard to win them for their clients...

The terms are pretty lame.

[Mike McCune]

First you have to go to http://www.iomega.com/rinaldi/request_rebate.html and request the rebate. The terms aren't even very good (see below) plus you have to wait until the end of October just to get the rebate! I don't even use my zip anymore since it clicks constantly and loses data.

Rinaldi Class Action Settlement

Michael+McCune ,as a member of the settlement class who has provided a Proof of Manifestation, you are entitled to your choice of one of the following rebates:

$17.50 toward the purchase of a Zip® 250 Drive; or
$12.50 toward the purchase of a Zip® 100 Drive; or
$40.00 toward the purchase of a Zip® 250 Drive and a 6-pack of Zip® 250 disks; or
$27.50 toward the purchase of a Zip® 100 Drive and a 6-pack of Zip® 100 disks; or
$17.50 toward the purchase of six Zip® 250 disks; or
$12.50 toward the purchase of six Zip® 100 disks; or
$12.50 toward the purchase of a Pocket Zip® - PC Drive; or
$35.00 toward the purchase of a Pocket Zip® - PC Drive and a 10 pack of Pocket Zip® media; or
$22.50 toward the purchase of a Pocket Zip® - PC Drive and a 4 pack of Pocket Zip® media.

If the Court approves the settlement, these rebates will be available for the purchase of one of these products from Iomega's on-line store, www.iomegadirect.com, or through the use of a mail-in rebate form. As explained in the Settlement Notice, the rebates only become effective after the Court approves the settlement. We currently anticipate that the settlement will become effective shortly after the settlement hearing, which the Court has scheduled for June 8, 2001. As described in the Settlement Notice, Iomega is required to make the rebates available within 120 days following the settlement effective date, but no earlier than October 31, 2001.

To take advantage of the rebates once they are available, we encourage you to take the following steps:

1. Print out this page for your records.
2. Return to the URL listed below on or about October 31, 2001 to determine if the settlement has been approved and, if so, to receive information on how to take advantage of the rebates through iomegadirect.com or through the mail-in program.

http://www.iomega.com/rinaldi/approve_y.html

Search | Legal & Privacy | Where To Buy | How Best to View

[iomega]
Copyright © 2000
Iomega Corporation
All rights reserved

CoD doesn't exist, can we have a drive?

[pete-classic]

A few years ago I was doing phone tech support for Dell. We used to have to replace drives because of this problem all the time.

One day I got a call from a customer that happened to be calling from Iomega. "Yeah, when I put a disk in my zip drive it goes click, click, click."

Thankfully, I made it to the mute button. That was easily the second funniest call I ever took at Dell.

-Peter

The Evil Suits Strike Again

[fm6]

OK, letting the quality of your product slip is not good. But if Iomega had just shipped a few bad drives, that would not be such a big deal. Even the best hardware breaks, and no sane consumer assumes otherwise.

Iomega's real mistake was trying to pretend that nothing was wrong. I suppose they were afraid of driving the stock price down or something. But if they had done a simple "we blew it" announcement and offered their users a simple diagnostic download (like Steve Gibson's TIP), they would have come out ahead of the game.

They do deserve points for ignoring expired warantees for CoD drives. But they didn't get these points, because they didn't publicize the policy for fear of publicizing the problem. Nor did they try to educate people on the technical issues (like why a non-defective drive can click when trying to read a defective disk). So they got bad press, rumors of a "contagious" bug, and a lawsuit.

Which is too bad. From the start, the Zip was obviously an attempt to replace the ubiguitous and useless HD floppy. I always hoped that attempt would succeed.

__

Get your Rebate here:

[table and chair]

http://www.iomega.com/rinaldi/request_rebate.html.

See also http://www.iomega.com/rinaldi/faqs.html and http://www.iomega.com/rinaldi/index.html