Class Action Filed Against Bonzi Software

An anonymous reader writes: "A nationwide class action lawsuit was filed on November 25, 2002, in the Superior Court of Spokane County against Bonzi Software, Inc. Bonzi is among the world's most prolific issuers of internet advertising banners. Bonzi's website has been ranked as one of the most frequently visited websites in the world. In case you are wondering Bonzi is the company responsible for those irritating popup ads which say things like 'Your computer is broadcasting an internet IP Address...' and 'Your internet connection is not optimized ...'" The attacking lawyers provide some samples of the ads they say are misleading.

Comments

Good idea

[quintessent]

I always hated those ads. Not because I ever clicked on one. But they made me think, if my mom saw one of those, she'd think it was a Windows message and click the Ok button.

Re:Good idea

[z01d]

teach her how to change the windows appearance (color scheme), that's what i taught my girl friend.

Re:Good idea

[coryboehne]

I'm actually guilty of clicking on one of these... Not because the fooled me though, I just have a habit of clicking banner ads to see what kind of crap is being sold by these people.

Now, I hate banner ads (nearly) as much as the next guy.. But really, let's admit to it, the creativeness required to think up faking an error screen to get users to click on it (think reaction vs. action) is genius. I'm not sure this suit has any merit at all (IANAL although I do play one on TV) and even if it does it really shouldn't.

Just because you find something annoying doesn't mean it should be against the law, I mean if you're in a restaruant and you are going to pay $100+ for the meal and someone's baby is crying, or they are talking to loud, or even better their baby is screaming because they're talking into a cell phone instead of paying attention to their kid and at that they are talking into the phone at an unreasonable volume level. Now, should this be illegal? The short answer is no.

Compare this to Dimtri and the DMCA fiasco, all he really did was innovate and try to do something different and make a buck in the process, and for what end result? To get sued for their intended innovation in business? Although I admit there are a million differences I wanted to use a well known case for comparison, so please spare the flames about adobe e-book vs misleading (looking) ads, the point is that it was innovation that lead both people on their path.

Anyway, it might be best to think about this before jumping on the "I hate everything that has anything to do with advertising on the internet" bandwagon and attacking this person for what really only amounts to innovation gone askew.

Re:Good idea

[Jace of Fuse!]

You are right, this should not be illegal just because it is annoying. There are already laws against misleading people with advertising. Some of the pop-ups are already made illegal by those laws, and they should be strictly enforced.

The rest of them, well, we can just block those ads. :D

Re:Good idea

[quintessent]

Just because you find something annoying doesn't mean it should be against the law.

Let's argue that one another day. But these ads are not just annoying, they're deceptive. That's a serious issue.

Re:Good idea

[teasea]

But really, let's admit to it, the creativeness required to think up faking an error screen to get users to click on it (think reaction vs. action) is genius
Nothing personal, but I've never understood this logic. I'll take the short end of long odds that someone thought of this and dismissed it. If not because they would feel like an asshole then because it would be likely to piss off potential customers (generally considered a Bad Thing). Regardless, I'd call it ballsy, but not genius.

Re:Good idea

[quintessent]

Believe me, by the time it gets through the jury, judge, and attorneys, it will be about 2 cents.

Re:Good idea

[mydigitalself]

sorry but i think you are just so on the wrong track. maybe you should stop clicking arbitary banners!

the point is NOT that they are being sued for being irritating, otherwise i would have filed a class action suit against destiny's child when they brought out BILLS, BILLS, BILLS!. they are filing for MISLEADING people.

you may not be mislead because you are some sort of genius (who clicks on banners?). but the point made a few posts up regarding a /.'s mom is EXACTLY the point of this - and my sentiments are identical to that post. if my mother saw a windows-looking popup message that said her internet connection is slow, click here to make it faster - she would click on it. funnily enough, clicking on that banner doesn't upgrade her 56k analog modem into an ADSL broadband connection - but what the hell does she know?

when i first encountered one of these, my first thought was clever, my second was disgust.

to come back to your stupid restaurant analagy... if they had a special if you order a great big juicy steak and get a free bottle of wine, you did so, and you got some thin shitty steak and a 125ml bottle of wine - then they are being MISLEADING. although that example is also pretty stupid. doh.

Re:Good idea

[sg_oneill]

Precisely. And if "broadcasting" means telling a webserver who wants the page then I cant see how this can be remidied.
"Hey webserver, someone wants a web page. Please disregard this however, because I won't tell you who".... Nope can't see it working.

UNLESS a proxy is involved.

And lets face it , do we REALLY want bonzi knowing every page we see via a proxy.........

Can you spot the ploy at play here?

Re:Good idea

[aWalrus]

Good point. I think this would be akin to road billboard ads trying to pass themselves as road signs. That would surely get them in trouble real fast. Maybe computerdom should be viewed in the same light?
--

Re:Good idea

[jonadab]

> Only banner two is legit, because it says your current connection
> MAY be capable of faster speeds.

These banners aren't fraudulent just because of what they say --
although what they say is certainly deceptive as well. My most
serious objection to them is that they are deliberately designed
to look like something much more important than advertising. If
a company started putting up roadside advertisements made to look
like road construction signs, little carts with blinking arrows
made of individual lights (such as the DOT uses), and so on, in
order to convince drivers that their driveway was the next exit,
or that it was imperative to get off at their exit as part of a
detour due to road construction, would we allow that? (Okay,
Microsoft is not a government agency, but the importance of
operating systems error messages on a computer is very similar
to the importance of highway department messages on a highway.)

That the messages in these fake dialogs are deceptive is just
the icing on the cake.

Re:Good idea

[Blkdeath]

Yep. Just the other day I watched a sysadmin talk down a user who was freaking out over his computer not being safe for the internet. It was quite sad.

I had to explain, very patiently, to a person that she could continue her research on old French poetry without having to worry about the 'error message' she saw in her web browser, and instruct her to ignore supposed error messages that popped into her browser window. She'd phoned the NOC in a panic, see, because 'her' Internet connection was not optimised, and this frightened her.

Of course, the fact that the connection belonged to the school (board) was of no consequence to her. Apparently it was urgent enough to interrupt me from doing ACTUAL work to calm her down (See, it was an emergency, I had to get there immediately because the computer wouldn't let her do research).

So consider this; the sysadmin who was "talking down to" this user - could it perhaps be the thirtieth user he'd had to calm down about his computer safety?

There are limits to the amount of human stupidity I can tolerate. Sorry. Companies and schools have computer use and security policies in effect; policies which are made available to the users often without them even having to ask. What do these users DO with these policies? They shove them in a drawer, or as I've seen more often than not line a bird cage with them (or circular-file them at the earliest possible convenience).

So no, I do not feel pity for the morons who've downloaded and installed this tripe. They've brought it on themselves for skimming EULAs, installing software they clearly know nothing about, and by holding out for the least expensive products and services including Information Technology - which has resulted in fewer employed knowledgeable sysadmins and more people who want to save a buck by doing "that computer stuff" by themselves, which only allows them to get bamboozled so bloody easily. Moreover, most users who contact network admins about these problems do so knowing full-well that they know MORE than (s)he does already, or they just brazenly go about doing something they don't understand without consulting anybody about it because, hey, they're smart enough to figure this out! Why on EARTH would someone be out to fool ME? The world is rosy and everybody's out to help their fellow man, after all.

Wake up, people, and welcome to the real bloody world. It's dank and people ARE out to get you. Corporations are not kind-hearted and selfless - you are but a number to them, and the only thing they want from that number is complacence and currency. The Internet is a big bad place full of crap, cruft, and do-evil types who will try to get ten year old girls to meet them for sexual purposes, who will try to get your bank account and credit card numbers from which to syphon money, and who will generally make your life a living hell. Why? Because they CAN and because that's human nature. Some people may be generally good, but a good bloody lot of them are BAD, and until people wake up to that fact we're going to see a lot more class-action suits designed to protect the willfully ignorant.

A note to every single person who's ever been taken advantage of, scammed out of money or personal information over the Internet because they didn't follow the same common-sense principles of keeping your personal information PRIVATE that people have been instituting in the "real world" for decades now;

GOOD ON YOU! I hope it HURT and I hope you HAVEN'T learned your lesson so that you KEEP getting screwed until it REALLY sinks in! I also hope that eventually you'll wake the hell up and realize that you NEED trained computer / network technicians because you don't understand the risks involved with the Internet and computer in general, or understand how to install, upgrade, or maintain one computer or a network full of computers.

You're like the people who have relatives who've died of lung cancer and mourned and greived your "loss" but decided to start smoking anyways, and perhaps held the tobacco companies at fault for your blatant stupidity. Or the people who've known people with, or who have died from AIDS or Syphyllis or any of the other hundreds of STDs out there today but who've decided that condoms are a waste of your time. Like the people who've thought they could fix their car in their driveway but have wound up paying a mechanic $2000 because you've so royally screwed your car beyond recognition - and I love it. The stupid deserve to be screwed over, not coddled. Coddling and protecting people is what CAUSES such rampant stupidity in the first place; people don't HAVE to think, because people around them will do it for them anyways.

That is all.

Misleading?

[DoctorPhish]

You mean, an ad that's shaped exactly like the widget set for the most widely installed OS in the world is misleading, just because it makes people think they're clicking on a native os dialog? THAT'S CRAZY!
Seriously though, this is exactly what suing is for...making companies pay when they cross the line. Now if we can just get those misleading domain renewal notice companies strung up...

Re:Misleading?

[MrLint]

Ive seen those ads.. and this is what i wondered abot the product they are selling, how exactly do they expect to allow people to connect to the internet *without* 'broadcasting' the IP address? I mean this doenst even make freaking sense. how do you send out packets with no source ip and expect to get web pages back? I find that ad totally misleading.

Re:Misleading?

[foo12]

I always love it when those ads pop-up on my Mac... you know, it wouldn't be terribly hard to sniff server-side for OS and deliver a customized version....

Ah shit, I've said too much.

I agree with everyone else who said...

[26199]

Good.

Hopefully they'll win, be awarded huge damages, and then we'll see noticably fewer adverts preying on the less computer-knowledgable...

I'm pretty sure bonzi can't be the only culprits, unless they're responsible for far more ads than this site bothers to mention...

From "Class Membership / Relief Sought"

[Galvatron]

Who is a member of the class, and what are they suing for? According to the website:

The class action Complaint was brought on behalf of all persons residing in the United States who have... encountered an advertising banner [from Bonzi].

The Complaint asks [for] punitive damages against Bonzi in the amount of $500 per class member, as well as compensatory damages in the amount of $5.00 per deceptive advertising banner issued by Bonzi.

Well, I gotta say, lots of luck. $500 for every Internet user in America, plus $5 for every ad impression? Certainly it'd teach these jerks a lesson, but it doesn't really seem very likely. That'd be something like $100 billion. The tobacco companies, one of the biggest lawsuits ever, only paid three times that amount, and that was spread among several companies. No way a judge is awarding this.

Who wins?

[tevita]

Is it just me, or does it seem that this is being done more as a source of income for the Lawyers, than an actual "lets remove the scurge" activity.

The big winners from this exercise will be the lawyers, surely?? And what about people who have been bamboozled who do not live in the USofA?

Re:Who wins?

[sg_oneill]

But it's dishonest suckerbucks. And to be honest, dude I think it's morally bankerupt (wow thats the second time I've used that phrase today!) to steal from the dumb to give to the smart.
Frankly , I still yearn for the days of the grey website when you could actually find what you where lookin for without having some stupid popup say "Your IP number is 192.168.0.3! You can get haxored!"
I say Bring the assholes down and lets get some integrity back in this industry.

Re:Who wins?

[walt-sjc]

This is EXACTLY about lawyers getting rich. Our broken legal system drives this stuff. That said, I think it's Very clear that this is a case of deceptive advertising. However, a class action suit is not the answer. The FTC should be the agency that goes in and fines them a couple million bucks, and forbids them from doing that crap in the future.

When you look at deceptive behavior on the net though, there are other bigger fish to fry. Interstitials for example. Isn't it deceptive when you click on a link for a news article and you get an ad instead? What about all the ads for something "free" and you find out that you need a subscription or the product is anything but free? How about endless pop-up hell (not a problem for me personally, I use Galeon)? What about all the SPAM advertising things that are obviously not true, or claiming that they are from someone else?

IMHO, the FTC hasn't done nearly enough dealing with fraud on the internet. It's not that they don't know about it or anything...

Re:Who wins?

[macdaddy357]

Bonzi can advertise without being deceptive. Tricking people with phony error messages is what this law suit is about. Deceptive advertising is illegal. Doing it online doesn't change that.

Re:Who wins?

[macdaddy357]

The FTC will not do anything, because they have no teeth. I tried to sic them on an online pyramid scheme called nexgen 3000 that conned my great uncle, but since I did not lose money, my complaint meant nothing. With Republicans in Congress and the White House, the FTC will never be given teeth, as it could then bite their big business cronies. Lawsuits are the only recourse we have. If "tort reform" goes through, we will lose our only recourse.

The one with the "Message Waiting"?

[grishnav]

If they really wanted a killer example, they would show the one that says "You have a message waiting". It made it look like, indeed, you had an extremely urgent message waiting. I never did know what it led to, I never fell for it, but I can distinctly remember my mom asking me why she couldn't get the message she had waiting, and why she just got bombarded with ads. It's good that someone is finially doing something about it.

Its honestly about time.

[Vengie]

Does anyone remember the early porn banners that were doing this?
"Movie downloading?"
You know that something is low and bad (tm) when even the porn industry shys away from it as a form of advertising. I was surprised when I started seeing these because it harked back to earlier days of those annoying porn ads that tried to look like UI components.
I guess bonzi didn't quite catch on -- and quite frankly, its about fscking time that someone finally said, "You're obnoxious, annoying, and we've had enough!"

Ugh

[ElectroKiwiMonkey]

"It's almost as if they think we're retarded."

Quite true, but sadly... I think the majority of users being hit with these ads aren't all that computer-savvy. I mean, AOL is still the most widely used ISP isn't it? Wouldn't that logically imply that since it's well-known for being granny/kiddie/etc friendly, a good chunk of internet users are in fact "retarded" in the context of this topic?

The problem, as I see it, isn't with Bonzi. They're a company, if they can do something to increase their profits I say more power to them. The problem arises when people can't distinguish between your advertising and messages from their OS that seem to be rather urgent.

Someone needs to beat whoever okays these ads as "a good idea, people will really like it I bet!" with a heavy stick. The average consumer these days may not be all that sharp but that doesn't mean we enjoy being exploited.

Annoying but Hardly Illegal

[IHateEverybody]

Sure, some people think those error messages are real but I'm having a hard time thinking of this as deceptive advertisements. Anybody who clicks on these things should quickly realize that they are ad banners disguised as error messages. If they want to sue over this, why not sue beer companies because you're not immediately surrounded by half-naked babes as soon as you open an ice cold Bud?

Re:Annoying but Hardly Illegal

[NeuroManson]

As described on the website, there are some people who aren't 100% computer savvy (mostly worker drones who only know enough to create an Excel document), who assume that the fake user interface is an actual system warning.

This can easily be compared to the Zimbabwe/Zaire/South Africa/etc money scam which a surprising number of people have also fallen for. After all, if they were any more knowlegable, they wouldn't have fallen for it, so it therefore isn't a crime, yes?

Or how about everyone who stupidly opens e-mail attachments, infecting their office system with Klez, Code Red, or whatever Trojan of the week is making the rounds? It isn't the fault of the folks who wrote the virii in the first place, oh nooooo, it's the fault of Microsoft and the users in the first place.

Re:Annoying but Hardly Illegal

[Martigan80]

Anybody who clicks on these things should quickly realize that they are ad banners disguised as error messages.

This is a big misconception. My own wife has been using computers for three years now and hasn't seen one untill now, and clicked it. With a bunch of follow-on adds to boot. Not eveyone surfs the internet the same way. It's like an mechanic telling a non-car savy person that the oil bad because he can smell it, and it needs to be changed now. And after they click it the damage will be done, so the mechanic will have your car jacked-up with the oil filter out.

Respectfully, I couldn't disagree with you more

[Qrlx]

Reading your comments again, I wonder if maybe you were being sarcastic...But you're saying that the scourge of deceptive popup ads is laudable because it represents some sort of "innovation in business?"

You work for Microsoft, don't you? :)

Yeah, Enron's accounting methods were very "innovative" as well. And I have a novel new take on "beach front property" for sale in Nevada.

Ihe ads in question, which I see constantly as I visit the crappy sites I for some reason go to, are *deceptive*. Like others have said, the popups are designed to look like a Windows dialog box, and trick teh n00bs into clicking them.

When you're looking at a magazine or newspaper, the ads that sorta look like articles are clearly labelled ADVERTISEMENT across the top. Sometimes in magazines you get a whole eight pages of advertising "streamed" with the regular content, but it's definitely identifiable and identified as advertising. Those "Click here to optimize your Internet connection" fakey dialogboxes are intended to decieve.

I'm actually kinda surprised Microsoft hasn't done anything about this (of course, maybe that's what the article says. I didn't read it, and I'm not going to. Nyeah.)

It's really funny, too, how pop-ups have changed over time. Soon we are going to see a lot more of the default Windows XP "clue-free blue" motif in those ads as everyone buys new computers. Really, they ought to be putting these popups in a time capsule, and in 20 years we can all laugh about the good old days with our friends we keep in touch with, thanks to ClassMates.com.

And in conclusion, I actually do hate everything that has anything to do with advertisement on the Internet. Except I kinda like the .NET ads here on Slashdot. They make me chuckle.

Re:Respectfully, I couldn't disagree with you more

[Iamthefallen]

Problem is they may not think it is an ad at all. You see an error message, click it, and get taken to a site where you can download a program that stops your IP from broadcasting address, creates faster downloads or some such, why would you have any reason not to think this program is from Microsoft? (or some other trusted vendor)

This means they won't start to distrust ads, but error messages and messageboxes, which is a bad thing and a big hassle for the average computer user.

Re:Best PopUp I've seen

[Jugalator]

lol, I guess I'm thinking too hard.

Didn't see what was so funny with that post and had to check out if it was a class D address in the multicast address space (looked suspicious), but it was actually a class E (first octet 240 to 248) which are all reserved for future/experimental use. So I thought "all right then... funny haha", but didn't think it was *that* funny.

Bad News, Guys ...

[Niet3sche]

Head here for a taste of what I'm talking about: http://www.wa.gov/biia/890723.htm Why is this bad news? Well - hit this http://www.lukins.com/bonzi/files/complaint.pdf and you'll understand. If not, I'll spell it out. EVEN IF this were to be taken seriously (not bloody likely), it looks really bad when the class representative (Philip J. Carstens) is the same dude who sued and won against his current employer for breaking a crown while lounging at work and eating their candy. It's kind of like the story about the burglar who sued for being trapped for 8 days in the garage of the house that he burgled - with "nothing" to survive on, save a case of soft drinks and a bag of dry dog food. Stupid, stupid, stupid. It's a shame that we can't have someone who hasn't rolled in shit before to take a stand. Like ... Neil Schwartzman! Or his attorney, anyway. :) Anyway ... this will go down in flames, and won't do any good - the large spam/ad houses can soak up the "annoyances" of lawsuits, and the small ones are becoming pretty obscure. Also ... does it occur to anyone that this is some stunt to say, "Hey! We now do that Internet Law Thingy (tm)!" - like a big Yellow Pages ad. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Wait ... God - WA is in the 9th Circuit ... hm. Those guys'll just take this and run with it. Woo-hoo! I'm waiting for my cash.

WTF!

[Anonymous Coward]

>.. But really, let's admit to it, the creativeness required to think up faking an error screen to get users to click on it (think reaction vs. action) is genius.

Yeah, and crashing planes on buildings is one the most creative way of killing people in public I've always seen. Now should we call the terrorists creativity genius?
Why don't you judge the *purpose* of the action and the implied effects, say making money on fooled people?
Advertising has *always* been deceiving; fake alerts are just one of the many ways people are screwed by advertisers.

Like cleaning products?

[m00nun1t]

These ads remind me a little of cleaning products ads, the ones that portray germs everywhere and you must buy new "PineOClean Deluxe Floor Cleaner" to get rid of them. I'm convinced these ads, while based on a small amount of truth, play a significant part in encouraging the germ paranoia in society.

These banners ads are the same - well, yes, strictly speaking you ARE sending your IP address, and yes, hackers can use that against you, but you and I know that in 99.9999999% of cases it's a non-issue. But your mum doesn't, nor does mine. So, they will become increasingly paranoid. And that's bad for all of us - like many of you, I make my living off the net. More paranoid = less willingess to try new things = less money spent on the net = less money for my family.

So let's sue the bastards. What the legal grounds are, I'll leave to the lawyers. That's just the reason I *want* to see them go down.

justice won't be done

[HBI]

After reading many such tales of class-action lawsuits, I can predict the results:

• The plaintiff's theory will probably fly, though the actual damages will be significantly less.
• It'll take years to litigate.
• One third of the damages will go to the lawyers, as usual.
• The remainder will be distributed in penny packets to the plaintiffs.
• Bonzi's rank and file employees will be jobless.
• The owners of Bonzi will get off scot free, as the corporation will take the hit, not them, individually.

So, in essence:

• The employees lose out on a job, and income.
• The lawyers make out like bandits.
• The parties damaged get inconsequential renumeration.
• The principals of Bonzi laugh all the way to the bank.

Note i'm not suggesting the employees are blameless here, but they are regular people, i'm sure, who just go to work every day.

Somehow, this doesn't seem to be much of a deterrent to setting up a spamhaus. What's to stop them from setting up another deceptive spam outfit using the capital from this firm? They made out, after all.

A good way to make civil penalties hurt those responsible is what is needed. Perhaps limit the protection that corporations provide their officers/stockholders? Let civil penalties for corporations translate into incarceration for those responsible for such damages? Seems harsh, almost un-American, but where is the solution otherwise?

Otherwise, the whole thing seems futile.

Along Similar Lines...

[NeuroManson]

One problem I've been wondering about with most Windows browsers (not sure about Netscape, I haven't trusted them since 4.x, and it's tendacy to completely nuke Win9x with every error): Bonzi, and CometCursor both pop up an ActiveX prompt asking if I want to install their spyware.

My question is pretty simple, why is it that the ActiveX prompt has a checkbox for "Always trust software from such and such", but none for "Never trust software from such and such", or at least a "Never ask me again" checkbox? This just strikes me as remarkably stupid. Especially since there's a lot of cleaning up one would have to do if anyone makes the mistake of checking off the "Always trust" box, when prompted to install spyware into their browser.

Re:What the fsck?

[Anonymous Coward]

The other side of the coin...

1. Benefit to end users. This will help teach them to actually *read* those error-message boxes rather than blindly clicking "OK". By actively punishing stupidity, we help raise user alertness.

2. Benefit to the market. When users are confused about whether something is an advertisement, they make decisions on bad information. By providing an obviously misleading ad, we encourage people to realize that almost all ads are at least a little misleading. It will help people learn to look for the best product rather than paying any attention to adverts.

3. Benefit to society. We don't want our best and brightest to believe that the easiest way to get ahead is to steal or hurt other people. We would like them to go into productive activities that generate new wealth, not unethical and deceptive practices that siphon off wealth from others. By contributing in a small way to turning people against advertising in general, these ads help accomplish this goal.

Re:Bonzi "Privacy" Statement

[Zoolander]

It's always this 'Newspeak' with these shady companies. If they're collecting info about you and your dog, they tell it in a 'privacy statement'. It's the same with DMCA: they wan't to call it 'DMCA - enabled', when in fact they are crippling your computer. One other little gem is the 'Initiative For Software Choice'. Choose any software you like, as long as you choose ours... Bleh. It's starting to be like the old Soviet propaganda in some ways.

Re:Too many moms in the world

[thomas.galvin]

This is too true.

My brother is reasonably clued-in about computers, but the last time I sat down at his box, he had a stack of pop-up waiting for his attention, a host of Windows Messenger ads waiting to be shut down, Bonzai Buddy or Gator or something crawling around his screen...I almost felt physically ill.

I like computers. They have this kind of elegance to them; they do what I tell them to, they make my life easier. But most people don't get to enjoy this experience. Most people have a little trouble understanding computers to begin with, and now folks lite Bonzai are making the experience even worse. These spyware/crapware/adware/etc are at least distracting people from whatever they are on the computer for, and at worst invading their privacy.

And possibly the worst thing is, people are being trained to except this as normal. The first time I saw something pop up on my machine, I figured out what was causing it, reformatted my hard drive, and made sure to never re-install the offending software. AdAware can't beat a good old fashioned OS Reinstall. But my brother didn't seem to think there was anything unusual about all of this garbage on his machine. TV has ads, after all, why wouldn't his computer?

You're right. Open season.

looks around for an Analog Reprogramming Tool*

*Hammer

Fines don't work

[EEgopher]

Fines are a joke; the successful company will laughably pay them off -- monthly if necessary -- and keep on scaring grandma.
It's like fines for speeding. $300 is nothing to the guy with a Porche. He will gladly pay an extra $300 per week to get to/from work faster, but on the other hand, $300 could be an entire week's pay for the family man of 5 kids who will lose his job if he's late once.

Fines aren't fair, and do very little; they keep the already-honest people at bay.
Firm legal action always brings down crappy institutions eventually . . .