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Few Takers For Microsoft's Settlement Cash
Makarand writes "According to this article on SiliconValley.com very few claims have been received
to claim money from a Microsoft
antitrust settlement in California. Only about
4% of the estimated 14 million eligible California consumers have bothered to file a claim till now.
The deadline for filing claims is officially April 28 but is likely to be pushed back into May or June.
Either, consumers have found the claims process too confusing, time-consuming and discouraging
to keep them from making a claim or they are waiting till the last minute to file(like taxes).
According to the settlement one-third of the unclaimed money will be kept by Microsoft and the rest
will be given to Californian schools."
First would be ignorance. I would imagine that a majority of the people who qualify for this settlement do not know about it and it's not as if Microsoft is going to go out of its way to inform them.
Second would be reality. To claim your settlement money you must produce your "Product Key number or Product ID number". Mind you these are your keys/ids from February 18, 1995 thru December 15, 2001. I don't know about you but those keys are long gone for me.
Third is human behavior. Corporations have known for a very long time that rebates are a fantastic sales tool precisely because many people do not follow through and claim them. I have a strong suspicion that the same principal is at work here - be it laziness or something else.
"If you're flammable and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit." - Mitch Hedberg
consumers have found the claims process too confusing, time-consuming and discouraging to keep them from making a claim
Well, DUH!
Does anyone really think Redmond is just going to happily dispose of their $$$ and make it easy to do so at the same time?
They didn't get to where they are now through stupidity.
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
Yeah... sssuuuuure.... I'm gonna do that right now!
Maybe people value their time more than vouchers? Seriously, how many mothers and fathers are going to take an hour out of a busy day (that they could be spending with their kids) to fill in paperwork to get some rebate on software if they decide to upgrade their system in the future?
Fact is most families don't care if their box isn't secure, patched or running the latest media player 9.03848.8464a - They'll use it once or twice a week to mail grandma.
Sorry Slashdotters, but people who upgrade enough to care about some freebie settlement vouchers ARE that current 14% of settlement takers.
The altruism of the wealthy is rarely more than a tax deduction.
I've said it before: if I rob a bank, and get away with the largest haul of any bank robbery in history, and rather than keeping all of my ill-gotten gains, I give away some small but meaningful portion of it to charity, and the recipients of my generosity are profoundly grateful for my gift ...
... I'm still a bank robber.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Microsoft does NOT force anyone's hand to use their software. Even on PCs that come with it, you can get a refund
You ever tried to do that?
they don't know that other OSes exist.
Actually, I'm thinking that they just don't give a rat's ass. Non-geeks that I know couldn't care less about the OS they're running. It just doesn't matter.
I didn't bother to fill out the form they sent me because I don't agree with the settlement and in fact think that it sets a very bad precedence. I purchased Microsoft software because it performed a task or service that I was willing to pay for. At no point was I tricked or forced to buy the stuff. I agreed to the price when I paid for it, so I think it would be wrong for me to change my mind years after the fact. I paid more for Autodesk, Novell and Sun software but you don't see anyone demanding rebates from them. This whole thing just struck me as a bunch of greedy layers and consumers who saw an opportunity to get something for nothing.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
<conspiracy>They can print software and donate it. I don't know how the accountants sort out the value of the donation though. If it is anything other than cost of production (not estimated costs based on R&D, or wholesale/retail prices etc), then MS has a license to print money and expand their market through tax writeoffs.</conspiracy>