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Class Action Suit Forces Palm to Replace Dead PDAs
leshert writes "After years of denying the problem with bad backup capacitors, Palm is settling a class action suit. If you have a dead Palm m100, m105, or m125, fill out the paperwork, and send it in, Palm will replace it with a new unit. No word yet on with what they'll be replacing it with, but I can imagine there are a lot of pack-rat geeks like me with one or more dead PDAs stashed away in a box."
Off to Ebay to find some dead pdas. sweet.
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
I bought my wife the m100 and it's the resean why she hates PDA's. After loosing all of her information a couple of time during the battery change away from home, she stopped using it. I've already got the papers filled out for the exchange.
__________ Leave me alone I'm compiling a RPG II program on my S/36...Thanks to metamucil I'm a Regular Meta Moderator
My fiancee had an m105 with the capacitor problem. We couldn't even get $20 at a garage sale for it, so we traded it to a friend for a bunny.
$*(#!@ing bunnies...
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
I've also got an IBM XT that stopped working around 1998. Hopefully someone will start a class action suit for that as well!
I'm tempted to send it in just to get a newer unit. There's no way they'd actually replace it with the same unit. However, there is the possiblity they might just replace the capacitors. Either way, I don't think i'll lose. Now, how to make my functioning palm 100 no longer function?
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Consumers are not the direct winners. The lawyers win more from each individual case, but when companies start stacking up loss after loss to class actions, they are more careful in the future.
It's better to take a 50k loss than a 4m loss.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Thankfully, e-mailed receipts are easy to fudge. Thank you, text editors!
The "consumer" does not win in a class action lawsuit.
They don't? Does that mean they don't get a replaced unit, payed for by Palm?
Maybe you've just got dollar signs in your own head, like those jerk lawyers....
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Sense this is a legal settlement any attempts to Scam this will be perjury.
__________ Leave me alone I'm compiling a RPG II program on my S/36...Thanks to metamucil I'm a Regular Meta Moderator
"The "consumer" does not win in a class action lawsuit."
So... Palm isn't going to avoid another class suit by making sure this doesn't happen again?
"Derp de derp."
I don't recall anything about free shipping so...
(of course I could be just jerking your chains.)
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
I wonder if they'd still replace my dead m100. Mind you, the problem is that the screen is shattered, but they'll overlook that one.. Won't they?
Just put lots of important information on it and forget to make backups. Always worked for me in the past!
Working in a DevOps shop is like playing in a band made up entirely of keytarists.
I just got the paperwork in the mail for this lawsuit a couple of days ago. I've been using a palm m100 for a few years, despite the battery problems. I just got used to always keeping it backed up on my computer.
The only time it caused any major problems was when I lost the data on my computer and went to load the info off of my palm and found the batteries to be dead. I tried replacing them, hoping that it would work as it's supposed to despite it's bad track record (can't remember if it ever worked right), but of course, it cleared the memory and I lost all my data.
The terms of the lawsuit say that it will be replaced with a new or refurbished palm of equal or greater value, so I'm filling out the forms in hope of getting something a bit better, but I'd settle for a properly working replacement. I can't imagine they will come up with that many equal replacements, especially since this just got on slashdot, so that seems like it would increase the likelihood of getting better replacements.
Break the mindless monotony!
maybe someone at Palm will admit to the noisy screen problem on the Tungsten E (http://www.genstart.dk/log/justblog.asp?justblog= 839). I've had my TE for about 2 years, and that is the only thing that has annoyed me about it (well, that, and I haven't found a Linux that runs on it ;) ).
Grab yourself a dead bargain
TODO: 753) write sig.
Half the posters here seem to be advocating fraud. Way to go guys.
The more you know, the less you understand.
Yep, Packrat 4.0 was a right stinker.
Sure am glad I kept that thing all these years.
Here and the wife says I'm teh st00p3d.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
So the question is: when is Palm going to fix/replace my Zire? It has two well-known problems:
<angry-rant>
Palm should have a better customer support but I suspect that the Harvard-CEO-type-of-mentality must dictate that its better to wait until users get organized and push a class action than just releasing a fix for software problems (point #2), because the latter would hurt the company's image (as if the class action wasn't bad enough).
<\angry-rant>
I own a Palm m125. It's a stinker, and has exactly this problem.
Thing is, I didn't get it "new". Mine was a promotional freebie -- last fall, Netgear had some mail-in offers where if you bought a $100 network switch, they'd send you a free Palm as well. It came in a sealed white box that said, basically, "refurbished by PalmOne".
I'm filing anyway. Worst they can do is deny my claim, and I'm out a stamp. Maybe I'll get very lucky and get a working unit, or a better unit, out of it. I've basically given up on it, so whatever.
I'm in Canada, and would love to have my buggered m105 replaced.
... and their friggn' problems with keeping the digitizer sync'd up. Everyone I know, even with 3rd party software fixes, can't use their tungstens without recalibrating the screen digitizer once a day. What a piece of crap the T was.
Who are you? The new #2 Who is #1? You are #617565. I am not a number, I am a free man! Muhahaha.
Such negativity I have never seen. Judging by all the responses to this article (the ones not advocating fraud that is) complaining about this or that failure with assorted Palms, can someone explain why would anybody even want a new Palm device? (or is it just a case of "hey, free stuff"?)
**CAUTION, THIS WILL VOID YOUR WARRENTY** I managed to part that fit, AND with batteries fully charged...if you yank them out, you'll have 15 minutes to put them back in.This repair lasted 9 months, then failed again. i'm on my 2nd fix. As i recall, the part is cheap. Technically, the replacement is a battery, not a cap OK...it's a "polycenic semiconductor (PAS) polymer" and is item # G13133 at electronic goldmine (www.goldmine-elec.com) . 5/ $1 + shipping. You'll have to cut the leads to fit the spot where the old one comes out, and it's bigger, so you kinda have to lean it against the reset switch, but *IT WORKS*. There's a good site somewhere that shows ya what the inside looks like. You'll need a 5mm Torx to open it with. You're on your own now. DIY. Mine's staying, to later become a weather station.
Back when i had a palm, I had an m125. The problem I had was that the digitizer went bad, and it stopped recognizing the stylus altogether after awhile. You can imagine the problems that presents. This happened on not one, but two m125s (I returned it for a new one, with the same exact problem; I gave up on it and traded it in for a PS2 about 3 years ago, to replace my first-gen PS2 that had also gone bad...)
The Braying and Neighing of Barnyard Animals Follows.
I hear ya! My m130 turned out to be a piece of crap!
5 4744,00.html?tw=wn_story_related%5D and there was a class action law suit against them because of false advertising.
After I got it I found out that it did not support the 65,535 colors as advertised [http://wired-vig.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,
A year after I got it; it would not hold a charge and the OS started to crash intermittently... I think it fell out of warranty otherwise I would have sent it back.
I won't ever buy anything by Palm again... After two class action lawsuits it's starting to look like they are just out to screw their customers.
I went through six Treo 270s in less than one year. Four snapped off flips, two defective soldered in batteries. No willingness to replace with something that wasn't 100% crap. I am now the proud user of a BlackBerry.
The only people they (PalmOne) treats worse than customers are employees.
-- $G
Even if most of the money is taken by the lawyers, the consumer still wins. As long as the settlement/award is of a sufficient size it provides a stimulus for that company, and any other company that reads the news, to conduct future business in an ethical manner then that class action suit has served its purpose. If that suit actual manages to make the situation right as well, such as with Palm replacing the bad units, then that's even better.
Corporations are, for the most part, money-making machines. They will continue to do what makes them money, even if it is illegal, until they feel that the odds of the government/class action lawsuits catching up with them are too great to risk the action. If people simply stopped suing companies when they
-GameMaster
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
I'm from Canada too and have a dead Palm m105. However rather than a dead PDA qualifying, it appears as though it would have to lose data while the user switches batteries. Regarless, the class does not apply to Canada.
From the LongNotice PDFB. The Settlement Class Members For purposes of settlement, the Court has certified a class consisting of all Persons (defined as any individual or legal entity residing or with its principal place of business in the United States, including the District of Columbia and territories and possessions) who, for their own use and not for resale, owned a Palm PDA (defined to mean a Palm personal digital assistant models m100, m105, and m125), from June 1, 1999, up to and including May 4, 2005. If you fit within this definition, you will be considered a member of the class ("Settlement Class Member") unless you request to be excluded.
My new treo 650 kicks ass. Palm seems to have done a pretty good job on this thing. The memory things sucks a bit, but you can put a GB SD card in there.
I bet palm had a lot of fun dealing with the m series, they had a settlement on the m515 line also: http://www.pdaesdsettlement.com/
My old school palmpilot works great still, 2 weeks of charge on 2 AAA batteries, only downside is 512k user memory, but then again, mine doesn't lose my data, and the user interface really hasn't changed in almost 10 years...
-and occasionaly a giant moose.
Did you never see Fight Club? Rent it and see the first ten minutes to see what a class action lawsuit means to corporations.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
Hasn't worked before, why would it now?
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
"Did you never see Fight Club? Rent it and see the first ten minutes to see what a class action lawsuit means to corporations."
If I recall correctly, they decide between fixing the defect or dealing with the lawsuit by which is cheaper. Fair enough. That means it costs them money either way when they release a faulty product. Either they'll decide to deal with the lawsuit or make the product better. The result? Consumers either get better products or compensation. If lawyers inflate the claims, then the decision to make products better gets even easier to make.
This is defined as 'no good to the consumer'? Why does this sound more like "this is no good to the company that I like"?
"Derp de derp."
I've had a Palm m125 for a few years now, and bout 18 months ago it developed this problem. What I did to deal with it was get an SD card, and the pay-for copy of CardBackup, which allows you to schedule backups of the Palm's memory to the SD card (the shareware doesn't do scheduling, you may be able to live without that and just do it manually, but sometimes I forget about it for ages, and by the time I change the batteries the Palm won't even turn on). So I have it automatically backup up to the card once a day, and after hotsync. Then when I change the batteries, I just run the program from the card to put it all back.
This may be a useful solution for those of you who can't participate in the suit and don't feel the need to go buy a new device.
(No association with the program or the author, I just like it because it made my m125 useful again.)
Oh great! I have a palm m105, and it's always had that exact problem. Mind you, I bought it used off ebay (about 3 years ago). And I live in Canada.
It seems I'm screwed. Unless someone can think of a way around that.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Some of you are overlooking a few points.
First, while the players involved with the suit have reached a settlement, it has not been approved by the court. While chances are the court will approve, its not a done deal. And the notice I got says that court hearing is not until August.
Second, before you all go looking for dead PDAs at yardsales and on eBay, the settlement also says its limited to m100, m105, and m125 PDAs that have that battery problem BUT ARE OTHERWISE FUNCTIONAL, and Palm(One) has the right to physically check your PDA to make sure that is the only problem.
Third, it says your unit will be replaced with a new or refurbed m100, m105, or m125. While you might end up having your m100 replaced with an m125, they are not going to take your banged up m100 and give you a shiny new T5 still in the shrinkwrapped retail box.
And forth, it also states the settlement is limited to one per address. While obviously there are ways around this one, its not hardly worth the trouble for such an outdated PDA.
Finally, I've seen a lot of posts here to the effect of "if Palms are so bad, why do you want another one?". The reason you see comments about Palms sucking is because the people who have them and like them don't comment. Its like complaints about PayPal...while the hundreds of people who have problems with PayPal make the evening news, you don't hear about the hundreds of thousands of people who never have a problem and are happy.
I have two m105s and a Zire 71. Other than losing the data while changing batteries in the m105s (which is why I synced daily), I have been extremely happy with all of them. And when I decide I need some additional function not in my Zire 71 and I need to replace it, it will be with another Palm product.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
When my m105 kicked it, I gave up on PalmOne hardware altogether. It was an entry level machine and if it hadn't lost its marbles every battery change, I certainly would have considered upgrading in time to another PalmOne device. Instead I got a Sony Clie, same great OS, more reliable hardware (even with the digitizer drift, fixed with a third party app). I wonder if they didn't take a calculated risk, hoping people would upgrade before the capacitor blew. In any case, I hope they've learned a lesson (too bad it took a lawsuit).
I've gone through 3 m105s. Not sure if I still have any of them laying around...
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Well said! I have a handspring deluxe visor, Palm i705, III, and VII. All of those work beautifully. The really crappy devices that I have floating around are all windows CE. Also, I have never had a problem with paypal. :)
Each processor would proceed sequentially as if it had been better for them not to rise against Saul.
Class actions generally suck for individual, they get settled late and often recieve less than the value of the product.
My Treo 600 has a noisy screen as well, it gets on my nerves...
I see they are asking for serial number. On the back of my m105 there is a sticker with a black part on top and a silver part on the bottom. The silver part has all the writing worn off on it. The black part has a number in the top right, which might be the serial but I'm not sure. Anyone know which number on these is the serial?
----
All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
Wait until someone mentions the tactic of stealing a new Playstation by "buying" a new Playstation, swapping it with a broken one, and returning it as "broken". People who would never dream of shoplifting a Playstation will happily do this. Damnest thing.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
Mine needs to be recalibrated every few days. That, or I could get used to clicking on the far-right hand side of the screen to active things in the middle.
The T has annoying bugs, and that's one right there.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
oi you... fuck off.. 2) I'm a registered owner and have real receipts. I think you'll find only registered owners will be able to prove they owned one of the items during the listed period. and 2) what the fuck is it with all the anonymous coward script crapflood reposting??? I thought they'd fixed this thing by making people post via captcha images
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
what about us consumers who have crappy battery capacitors in the rest of the world???
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I'll probably give the replacement unit to my wife if it's decent. If not, I'll sell it or donate it to charity.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
OTOH, in the "factory outlet", they are selling "open box" Zire 21s for $49.
Either way, the Zire (whether you get it new with a trade in, or used without) is basically worth $49. The likely replacement units will be refurb Zire 21s, meaning you'll get a $49 unit as a replacement.
OTOH, if you've been thinking about buying a new Palm, you can get a gift cert for $50 worth of accessories just by buying the one you want and trading in your old one.
Seems if you take the commercial trade in deal vs. the settlement deal, you'll come out a buck ahead.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
Palm doesn't seem to be very popular here. Did I ever mention that my palm m515 was just great... Er, I mean, damn Palm! It only fell in the toilet twice! Twice! Khan!
I back up to an 8MB Northstar Mobile MemorySafe module somewhat frequently (I actually alternate between a pair of them), and when I change the batteries I simply transfer the MemorySafe software from one of the other palms we have and then restore the old data from the module.
It hasn't failed me yet! I also keep an emergency backup on the PC, but I've not had to use it for quite some time...
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Why the hell are there posts about T-bloody-rex sex and drilling to the centre of the earth in an artical about palm pda's GGS?
Sigs are for wimps
Maybe it's time to decide if you really need that shit cluttering up your closet/landfill when you really don't have a use it.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Bring forth your own class action suit in your own country (provided it has such provitions - otherwise, you could go for a private suit. eek.)
;)
If this settlement is approved by the USA court, it'll very much strengthen your case* in other countries - which you'd typically need as there's far fewer people
(Not as much as when there would be an actual court ruling, however.)
Oh... get a nice consumer rights association involved to get things rolling.
While the bulk of your comment is correct, there are a few points that I feel are worth nitpicking.
- settlement.pdf Page 3 Line 23). No specifications are given as to what they will actually be replaced with. It's possible that they may actually replace it with a 'shiny new T5', only highly unlikely. I somewhat wonder if they're not going to just take all the palms they receive back, refurb them with new capacitors, and use those to settle the claim.
The forms do not state that your unit will be replaced with a new or refurbed m100, m105, or m125. They actually state that it will be replaced with a new or refurbished unit of same or higher model (see http://www.taylorsettlement.com/LongNotice-taylor
Additionally, no where does it state that you may only submit one claim per address. What it does state is that you may only make a claim once for each palm, and that each claim must be made on a seperate form. (See link above, Page 4 Lines 2 through 4)
~DN
My PalmIIIx is still going strong. And I can still buy a replacement at Fry's if it falls in the toilet (like my first one did).
I had the Tungsten MAD digitiser drift problem - it turns out that it's a hardware problem that can be fixed fairly easily, if you're happy with opening the device up.
S creen=CTGY&Store_Code=GHT&Category_Code=_tungsten_ takeapart
and a discussion at http://www.palminfocenter.com/forum/viewtopic.php? t=15458&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=48
To summarise, it looks like the screen digitiser cable connection gets a bit wonky, due to the pcb behind the buttons being loose.
Open it up, and wedge the pcb in place with something - I used a couple of bits of broken matchstick, and put a piece of gaffa tape over the cable connection.
There are detailed instructions at http://www.gethightech.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?
I use my tungsten every day now, and it now needs recalibrating every 6 months or so, rather than every time I open it. I can't imagine that I'll ever buy another Palm though, even when they do start using Linux.
:wq
You do realize that you're defending a product designed to store data, only it sometimes forgets to store that data, right?
"Derp de derp."
They will continue to do what makes them money, even if it is illegal, until they feel that the odds of the government/class action lawsuits catching up with them are too great to risk the action.
Even then, they may not stop. A professor of mine had developed a system that could prevent airbags from firing if the passenger was in a position that would make firing dangerous (like leaning over with their head near the airbag compartment), or if a child was in the seat.
When he first showed it to Ford and GM, it would cost around $400-600 per car, however (He says it'd cost closer to $200 now, though, and it'll be even cheaper in another year or two).
The man he talked to at Ford *litterally* walked him through the math to show him how much it would cost to put this $500 device into however many million vehicles they made that year, and then showed him how much it cost them to settle lawsuits when people were injured or even killed by firing airbags. It was twice as expensive to fix the problem as to just pay people off when the problem caused damage, so they didn't fix it.
Apparently the settlement documents have changed slightly over time. The ones I printed out the day I received notice do indeed state one claim per address. But upon looking just now, you are correct that the current forms do not contain that limit. Thanks for pointing that out since I have two of them.
:-)
I'm not sure I'm going to bother sending in my m105s. The way I read it, first you send in the claim form, then Palm decides whether or not they will accept your claim. If they accept, they send you a shipping label to send in your old Palm. You send in the old model, and then they send you back another one. That's all well and good...but how long am I going to be without the PDA? My m105s don't sit in a desk drawer, they are actively used on a daily basis. I'd rather just live with the annoyance of data loss than give them up for a few weeks...unless I hear they are sending out T5s
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Thankfully, e-mailed receipts are easy to fudge. Thank you, text editors!
Well, that's OK, just so long as an HTML editor won't get you past Airport Security. Oh, wait...
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Why hasn't anyone learned, like me, to stop buying Palm products? Two useless backup SD cards, one SD (64M?) card, and the M125 are wasted money and maulfunctioning. The backups where a problem and did NOT keep the data I lost due to pecular errors that happened during backup / restore which never worked anyway, lost a months notes & work! Stop buying these junk toys. Buy REAL WORKING PDA's if they exist at all. Maybe not the Sony's? Cell phones, BTW, are useless to me (and too expensive with attachments for my hearing loss)
I'll think of a really good SIG just before I die.