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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'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.
"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 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!
Half the posters here seem to be advocating fraud. Way to go guys.
The more you know, the less you understand.
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'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.
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'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.)
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.
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.