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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."
Weren't these guys going to make it easier?
Or perhaps these folks are refraining because the fine print of the license for XP includes the following:
"User agrees to indemnify Microsoft against any and all abuse of the legal system and will in no case whatsoever assist any governmnent, foreign or domestic, in levying sanctions against Microsoft."
(I don't run it, but it wouldn't surprise me to see this in there.)
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
... to say that "the rest of the 'money' will go to California schools".
What will go to "California Schools" is 'boxes of Microsoft product', valued at the $-value for the settlement, by a team of accountants, lawyers, and auditors.
This settlement is a sham. It is nothing but an easy seeding program for Microsoft market-share harvests in the 6-month to 1-year time frame, among a vulnerable and naive market (education), and Microsoft know it.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Everyone knows that silly Monopoly money isn't real!
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Well I guess the process is too long, to heavy and they have no guarantee to get anything in the end.
I guess that's why those people don't apply security patches either!
--JC
--JC
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
Microsoft is a public company. With millions of shareholders. That is, millions of owners. You want to own a piece of it yourself, and have voting rights regarding the company's future? Go buy a block of stock.
/. dominated by so much misplaced anger.
I know I'll probably get modded down and get all kinds of bad karma for this, but I hate to see
Microsoft is not just Gates and Balmer. It is a voice for a large number of people. It's this voice that gives Microsoft the power it has.
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.
Last I checked, between February 18, 1995 thru December 15, 2001 you were able to buy Windows 95, 98, ME, NT4 and NT5 (Aka Windows 2000). None of which have manditory registration.
As a result, Microsoft is completely incapable of having a record of who purchased their product.
Moreover, even if they did have such a list, they don't nessicarily have a list specifying the state in which the user resides, and as this rebate only applies to users in California...
"If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living."
- Seneca
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.
I don't believe class-action lawsuits truly benefit anyone except the lawyers, who are the only ones that will receive any useful prize from the settlement. So let them get their money from Microsoft without my help, and if California schools get my $3.77, or whatever paltry fractional amount would have been sent, great, at least the money is being re-pooled into a useful amount again.
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?
It's almost like those rebate programs:
1) Overprice your product and offer a rebate
2) Bank on the fact that only a small percentage of customers actually mail in for the rebate, and do so correctly.
3) Profit
So MS's business model is looking more and more like:
1) Do whatever you want and let others/the government file antitrust suits.
2) Settle suits knowing almost nothing will be done to enforce/cash in on them
3) Profit
If Dubya wants to convince the public that the US economy is getting better, he should just designate litigation settlement income as a business sector instead of trying to classify burger flippers as "manufacturing jobs".
=Smidge=
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>
Wow, It's not that hard to file. I got maybe 4 forms sent to me already in the mail. I thought the deadline was long ago (mid-March), but it seems to have been extended to April 28.
As long as you are filing for less than $100 reimbursement, you do not need to provide any product keys or proof. You just have to provide a list of what you bought, and most consumers will easily fall within the $100 limit and qualify for the standard (easy) form.
In other words, fill out a form saying "I bought Windows 98 on or about this date" and you get a voucher.
That's it. No proof necessary if your filing is under $100 and fewer than 5 products purchased. So get your forms, because time is running out! Go to the web site and request a standard claim form now.