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Iowa Court May Order Microsoft Refunds

Posted by timothy on from the prime-winners-are-the-lawyers dept.

dowobeha writes: "The Des Moines Register is reporting that thousands of Windows 98 users in Iowa could get $40 refunds from Microsoft. The Iowa Supreme Court has found the big boys from Redmond guilty of price fixing in violation of a 1976 Iowa law. According to the report, this is the first antitrust ruling in any state that favors 'indirect purchasers' (regular consumers who got Windows preinstalled on their newly purchased computer) rather than "direct purchasers" (manufacturers who license Windows to distribute on new machines)."

5 of 316 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Consumers, not states, brought the case by Clay+Mitchell · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Hey, this is good! Instead of the the big corporations petitioning the government to screw Joe Citizen, Joe Citizen petitions the government to hose the corporation! I like this!

    But there's a good lesson here, don't sit back and take it - it's easy to sit around and think academically "oh my, they certainly can't take away this! It's guaranteed in the bill of rights!" but who actually gets out there and tries to stop it?

  2. The check is not in the mail. by n0ano · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Assuming that MicroSoft actually winds up owing every one is the class $40, a big if, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for a check. What do you want to bet that the payout will be in the form of a $40 rebate on your next MS purchase?


    I love the US class action legal system. The lawyers get paid big bucks and the consumers wind up funding a new marketing program that locks them in even tighter to the guilty party!

    --
    Don Dugger
    "Censeo Toto nos in Kansa esse decisse." - D. Gale
  3. Good luck! by polymath69 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Don't count on a check. The article says "refunds or credits". What company ever writes a check when it can simply print the money in the form of a coupon?

    That way, they get you coming and going. You paid for the OS you didn't want or need, and you don't intend to buy anything from them in the future anyway, so the coupon will remain unused... Microsoft smiles. The lawyers smile, too, since they got paid. Consumers? Hey, you won, right? Be happy about it.

    --

    --
    I don't want to rule the world... I just want to be in charge of mayonnaise.
  4. It wasn't a decision to force a refund by jmcnamera · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Read the article again, this is the Iowa State Supreme court telling the local court to hear the case.

    It wasn't decided if it was anti-trust or that a refund was due. Only that it should be heard.

    --
    this is not a sig
  5. How I avoided the Micro$oft Tax by bnavarro · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I just purchased a Pentium 4 screamer for myself. Since I was converting my old Pentium II compuuter to a Lunx box, I wanted to use the copy of Windows 2000 that I had running on it on my new computer -- I refuse to "upgrade" to XP. I was mindful of getting slapped with the OS tax if I refused a copy of XP. My solution?

    I built the damn thing myself.

    I bought the motherboard, video card, and case from CompUSA. I bought the memory, hard drive, DVD drive, skipped the floppy drive, Ethernet card, and sound card from a mom and pop computer store.

    If you have avoided rolling your own computer, I must report that it was extremely intuitive and easy. If you can build Lego models, you can build your own PC.

    Just say no to the MS tax. Build your own computer!