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Microsoft Class Action Suit Outcome: Indifference
Ec|ipse writes points out that only about 7 percent of eligible Californians have decided to take Microsoft up on their settlement claims resulting from a class action suit in that state, writing "Microsoft contends that it's because the software giant is so popular with consumers." Eclipse excerpts from the press release on Yahoo! (from Settlement Recovery Center, a company that "helps businesses participate in class action settlements"): "With only two weeks remaining until the January 8 deadline, fewer than one million claims have been filed, out of some fourteen million eligible, for a share of the $1.1 billion fund arising out of the Microsoft class action settlement in California."
I think this is probably the case not only because Microsoft is "popular" (read: has 90+% of the OS market), but also because Microsoft software (along with the bugs, security issues, and spyware/adware problems that come with it) is accepted by society because people aren't aware of the alternatives that are out there (Mac and Linux) and MS has enough money and political clout to keep these alternatives at bay.
Could it be that so "few" people have filed a claim because of the lack of publicity surrounding the case? I don't exactly see front-page articles in the Los Angeles Times saying to go pick up your money.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
What percentage of those eligible are aware of the suit? Of those, how many bother to file it? The claimed 7% seems pretty high as it is. Why bother to file this (spending the time to look for the required paper work, giving away information you may not want to share) only to get a few bucks? It's not worth it. Class action law suits are never worth anything unless you are the attorneys filing it. Those are the only ones making any money out of all this (and absurd amounts at that).
Not that I'm a big consumer of Microsoft software in any case :-)
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
"mail-in rebates"? Because NO ONE SENDS THEM IN.
I don't send them in.
Fill it out, mail it, wait for it...
All that for 5 bucks off? And now they have legal grounds to bury you in spam... no thanks.
You can't take the sky from me...
Doesn't it seem like "exploiting customers by fraudulent means" should carry a heavier sentence than this?
Microsoft has smart lawyers, and California's lawyers apparently rolled over and played dead, after making a good show of pursuing the case after most others had dropped it.
But let's look at this...Microsoft's lawyers negotiated a settlement whereby:
1. claimants have to produce and file an old receipt for purchase of software. (dropoff percentage upward of 75%, for sure)
2. claimants receive a VOUCHER FOR FUTURE PURCHASES of computer stuff. (dropoff percentage at least 50%)
3. claimants have to send all that paperwork to a claim management company to get their real money (dropoff percentage at least 30% -- would be much higher, but any customer who is this far along can be presumed to be motivated...)
and lastly, the icing on the cake:
4. two-thirds of unclaimed funds are donated, by Microsoft, to California schools in the form of computer hardware and software. The software, of course, has zero incremental cost to Microsoft except in lost sales to CA schools, but even more importantly...there is no donation better spent than a donation to kids. Get them early, get them for life.
What ever happened to: "You screwed the plaintiffs over. Make full restitution now or go to jail."?
I qualify under the settlement, but it wasn't satisfaction with Microsoft or simple indifference that made me not file for it. It's the settlement itself. What do I get from it? A paltry $5 off Word, for example, or $30 off the complete Office suite. That isn't even enough to offset the sales tax on those products. And I have to buy products from the same company being punished. They've abused their monopoly position, not to mention been the root cause of most of the virus headaches I have to deal with, and I should add to their profits? Why? If the settlement had involved MS having to give me a discount on competitor's products, I might've gone for it.
Unfortunately, it is all in the form of vouchers. (I can't take credit for this, it was pointed out by someone else, earlier.) So, for a single Windows/Office install, someone would get vouchers good toward a minor portion of the next purchase of Microsoft Products.
What is interesting is the effect of the vouchers on the profitability of Microsoft. Two cases are possible when someone is going to use a voucher -
Case 1: Someone uses the voucher to purchase software that they originally would not have purchased: Since fix costs have already been covered and variable costs are so small, the additional purchase results in profit for Microsoft.
Case 2: Someone uses the voucher to purchase software that they were going to purchase, anyway: Since the amount of the voucher is less than the gross margin on the software, Microsoft profits from the purchase, just not as much as they would have if the voucher was not used.
In both cases, Microsoft profits as far as I can see. If more than enough people are in the Case 1 group to offset the reduced revenue due to those in the Case 2 group, it would result in an increase in Microsoft's net profit. Wow, what a way to punish them.
Of course, I could be mistaken about Microsoft's variable costs. It could be that the costs of media, packaging, and distribution are high enough that the discount from the voucher results in a net loss to the bottom line. I seriously doubt it, though.
However, to non-geeks (reminder: this covers 99+% of the US population), Bill Gates is a hero and a role model.
Oh, I disagree completely. I talk to enough "non-geeks," as you call them, to know that the general consensus is that Windows is a necessary evil and that Bill Gates _has_ manipulated the system to his advantage and his competitors (and sometimes customers) disadvantage. To be sure, they don't react angrily to this, one fist in the air and the other handing $1500 to a sales person at the Apple store. They see Gates and Microsoft mainly as unfortunate but typical of any large company. They feel about as empowered to do anything as they do about complaining about the high costs of anything.
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
The notice I recieved didn't offer cash. It seemed to be offering MS software at reduced prices:
..." - empahsis added.
"... People and businesses that are covered by the settlement can get vouchers that may be redeemed for cash after buying eligible computer products.
You'ld think that MS would be able to look at it's registered users database and simply know who is elegible. After all, some of us who build our own systems have been paying the old MS tax for years, and dutifully registered everything in the faint hope that MS support just might be able to help some time.
I would just as soon the state collected the settlement and reduced taxes a little.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
Microsoft has be fighting tooth and nail for years to finish off apple in the Educational market. This is brilliant. They take their fine, pay it in software whose value has been bloated by the monopoly ($100 dollars for a wordprocessor, wtf?), and get thosands (millions?) of schools teaching the next gen of lusers to use Microsoft, and only Microsoft (yeah, they can apply all those 'computer skills' to a Mac, but most are too lazy, Believe it or not). It's amazing how Microsoft has turned every aspect of this trial to their advantage. I'd be sickened if it wasn't so impressive...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
From the site: People and businesses that are covered by the settlement can get vouchers that may be redeemed for cash after buying eligible computer products.
Yeah, that's right. You can get up to $100 in REBATES. You will not end up with a net gain of $100, you will just get $100 off some crap that you probably wouldn't have bought had you not been given some stupid voucher and felt the need to use it.
Kudos to Microsoft for fooling the courts into such a meaningless penalty.
I started to fill out the forms. My responsibility to participate & all that, but when I saw the amount of required personal information, I was done. I realize that this is routine for a class action settlement, but I'd never trust MS with this information because they aren't trustworthy.
Look at what these people will do to ensure that they don't lose (I think forging evidence to present to a judge is pretty damned scary.) I would bet a tidy sum that all this personal data won't just be filed & forgotten. Perhaps a small army of private investigators can make some kind of profitable use of this data.
Claimed your windows rebates? You could be a candidate for an extended series of personal salescalls, (the kind that include your boss's bosses or clients) or maybe there's a list of consultants that they "cannot recommend." Simple to just pass it on to their strong-arm organization the BSA. Ready for an audit?
Although I exaggerate, one thing is certain: MS does not have more respect for me than for the law or federal judges. Thus, I will not do business with them.
Finally, and more generally: Who would _choose_ to enter into a contract with an entity that is both hostile & tremendously powerful? A friend with his own business refuses to take orders from government entities for similar reasons.
Ever heard of what it's like to do business with Wal-Mart, or better, what happens to a restaurant that becomes a hangout for mobsters? The owners think that the mob will take care of them, but it's cheaper to just drive them out of business & then find another place to go eat free.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
... is that most of the people who are even aware of this class action lawsuit are thinking ``Oh, great! Just what I need: a check for $50 or voucher from Microsoft for some more of their buggy software''. At that point they decide that the suit isn't worth the effort to track down the receipt for the PC/software and, from there on, their brain's ``waste of my time'' filter kicks in whenever it's mentioned.
Now if it turned out that you'd get a full refund of the retail price of your MS software plus, oh, $100-$200 for every time your PC had to be rebuilt from scratch due to the swiss cheese nature of their OS/application security, then it starts becoming worthwhile to join in on the suit.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
All class actions suits are a scam and the MS settlement is quite typical. It's always about lawyers making a lot of money, not about consumer's rights. Slashdotters should not have assumed that this suite was meaningful or that it would have any substantial negative impact on MS.