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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."
Does this mean the people who do bother to file get more money? Looks like they'll be getting about 1200 each at this point.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
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).
Did it ever occur to them that every time we try signing up for the class action lawsuit, when we hit submit iexplorer.exe gives us a general protection fault? That seven percent must be the Mozilla users.
Why do you think stores offer "mail-in rebates"? Because NO ONE SENDS THEM IN. Or at least a substantially small number as to still be wildly profitable.
People like to think they're getting a good deal, but when it comes time to send in the paperwork, it doesn't happen.
Jerry
http://www.syslog.org/
Not that I'm a big consumer of Microsoft software in any case :-)
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
My state of Missouri decided to "get tough" with Nintendo's price fixing back in the late 1980's, I belive. I signed in for the class action suit and everything. Being young, I had the nievity to believe that this would change things. The state "won," and I got a certificate for $10 off my next game purchase. Wow, Missouri punished Nintendo with a game sale and state-wide advertisments.
The only think that Microsoft didn't manage to do in this case was tie the deal to new purchases; otherwise, it's Microsoft laughing, not rumbles from Mt. St. Helens over there.
Bel, the mostly sane.. "Of course I can't see anything! I'm standing on the shoulders of idiots." -- Me
Not to mention most people just don't feel like going through the hassle of claiming thier $3.95/free crap product that most class action suits get them. The only imedeate winners in class action suits are the lawyers who file them. The class is usually so large compared to the award that after the lawyers 1/4-1/3 is taken there is simply not enough to give any members of the class any significant payout.
Now in theory consumers should still take a win as the offending company's loss should be enough to make future simular actions to potentially costly to risk. Unfortunately if that's not the case the companies will general treat it as 'the cost of doing bussiness'. If microsoft made >1.1Billion(actually it's a smaller number than that as they had that money for a while to use as capital) doing whatever they just got slapped with they still proffit from doing so, just not as much as they could have.
I think class actions suits should have a minimum award if successfull of at least the amount the company made(income, NOT proffit, and in actuall cash, not products) off of it's improper actions. That and reduce the lawyers portion to say 5-10% and then not only might it work as intended, but the members of the class might actually get enough $ to make the hassle worth while.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
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.
This just shows something most geeks are too naive to realize: There exists a huge gap between how geeks see MS and how Everyone Else(TM) sees MS. Call it the "Microsoft Gap".
Had the 14 million people eligible to take a small slice of Microsoft's money all been geeks, I'd say at least 10 million would have claimed the money-- not because they needed it, but simply to hurt, and spite, MS. It would have been a little "death of a thousand cuts" for MS. Instead, we got a lackluster 1 million claiming their slice of the pie. Actually, it's a miracle that even that many people signed on.
Most geeks are too naive to realize just how popular Microsoft really is among the general populace.
To most geeks, Bill Gates is a wily scuzzbag who happened to be in the right place at the right time, applied his incredible business acumen, and now is in a position where his company can milk the general populace for a significant percentage of the cost of a new computer every single time they buy one. He's a robber baron who takes other companies'/peoples' good ideas, bastardizes them, and makes money on them, leaving the original creators to go bankrupt (at worst) or carve out tiny niche markets (at best). Or he just buys them out.
However, to non-geeks (reminder: this covers 99+% of the US population), Bill Gates is a hero and a role model. He is someone that they aspire to be like, due to his incredible wealth and business acumen. The general Party Line among the unwashed masses seems to be "Well, Windows is what everyone runs, so it must be the best." This is rather akin to "every keyboard uses QWERTY, so QWERTY must be better than all other layouts" (e.g. Dvorak). It's also akin to "VHS beat out Beta, so VHS must be better in all ways." Nevertheless, this is how most people in the US feel on the matter.
Until geeks understand how non-geeks think, no progress will be made in educating the public.
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
At my local (California) community college, one Monday in mid-December, four young men stood outside the cafeteria. They were trying to get people to sign a petition "to help breast cancer research". They were being a little abrasive; people who ignored them were assailed with loud comments like, "Oh, I guess you don't care about breast cancer."
I walked up to them and asked what their petition was about. The "leader" explained that only 1% of people had claimed their refunds from Microsoft's antitrust settlement. He said that he and his companions were working for the antitrust lawyers, who would be paid on the basis of how many people actually collected this settlement money. If I signed certain paperwork, the $100 I was "entitled" to would go to breast cancer research, and I would get a tax deductible donation. "So have you bought any Microsoft products in the past?" he asked.
"No."
"Does your computer have any Microsoft stuff on it?"
"No," I replied. "I use Linux."
"Ohh, Lanux," he replied knowingly. He tried again: "Have you even used anything from Microsoft?" He reminded me I didn't need documentation.
At that moment, a middle-aged woman walked briskly up to the table. "I do NOT appreciate what you said to my daughter!" she said.
"What?"
"She couldn't sign your petition--because she's only 16. And you said, 'Bad karma, I hope you get breast cancer'!"
I left the table and walked over to a young woman standing a few yards away. "Did they actually say that?!" I asked.
"Yes," she said, tears in her eyes. "I can't sign that, because I'm not old enough. And they said, 'Bad karma, I hope you get breast cancer.'"
"That's terrible," I said. Her mom came back to us, snapped, "Let's go," and they did.
I left for class. As I did, I heard a young-ish female student trying to score points with the petitioning males: in a catty, loud voice, she remarked, "Gosh, some people are soooo easily offended."
If aspiration is a virtue, achievement cannot be a vice.
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.