Microsoft Sued Over Fall Update Issues

Gamespot is reporting that a rumour that's been floating around has, for once, turned out to be true. Microsoft has been sued for breach of contract and negligence in connection to the Xbox Live Fall Update. From the article: " Stating that the affected consumers number in 'at least the thousands,' the suit contends that Microsoft is refusing to repair or replace the broken systems unless the users pay 'up to $140' to ship it back to the company. The plaintiff is demanding that Microsoft pay at least $5 million in damages for breach of contract to those affected by the Fall Update problems, and an additional amount of at least $5 million in damages for an unfair or deceptive act under the CPA. Should Microsoft argue that it had no agreement to breach with the affected users, then the plaintiff contends Microsoft was negligent, and should be made to pay at least $5 million in damages." It should be noted that Microsoft has responded by saying it has offered to completely cover the cost of systems affected by the update, including shipping.

Comments

Probably not a case

[192939495969798999]

if "Microsoft has responded by saying it has offered to completely cover the cost of systems affected by the update, including shipping", then I don't see how there'd be much of a case... they're offering to make good on the initial upset, so how can they also be expected to compensate those same people twice for the same fix (once for the actual shipping, and then again for an amount equal to that in cash)?

Re:Probably not a case

[Lanoitarus]

A company can be sued for negligence and violation of the consumer protection act if it can be shown that it did know or should reasonably have known about the problem, and failed to take action to prevent it. It has nothing to do with a willingness to fix it.

I don't mean to imply that this is a valid lawsuit, but a good counter example is car seat belts. Lets imagine that CAR COMPANY A produces a car that it turns out has faulty seat belts. Even if the car company issues a recall and offers to completely pay all costs of repairs (which it no doubt would), it can still possibly be sued if it can be shown that the error was the result of negligence and not of innocent or unforseeable error (or even more seriously, if it can be shown that it KNEW about the problem and didnt act to fix it).

Again, I dont think this applies to this case, and i doubt this case has an ounce of merit, but Im just saying that Microsofts willingness to replace and pay for shipping does NOT completely shield them from a lawsuit, if the lawsuit was valid

Re:Probably not a case

[Tairgire]

Part of the problem is that Microsoft is only acknowledging fault in the case of specific error messages. Other consoles, including mine and a 17 page thread in the Xbox forums worth of people, were bricked with no error message by the "fixed" version of the update. And I don't mod anything. The best they would offer me was a 25% discount on the charges, bringing it down to $105 or so, and that was only because I was within three months of going out of warranty -- it had nothing to do with acknowledging fault.

Cost cutting a little out of control?

[PingSpike]

I played the xbox360 at my bother in law's over the thanksgiving holiday. I was pretty impressed with the graphical power and gears of war is the first shooter I didn't feel clumsy with when playing with a controller. But the system has eaten his oblivion disk twice (he had a store wipe it once) as well as leaving circular scratches on his call of duty 3 disk that prevent several midgame levels from loading.

Microsoft claims that the machine cannot be moved while on with a disk in it or it will do this to the disks. He claims he didn't move it. My feeling is there's no excuse for the machine doing that regardless. Skipping, rebooting midgame, hell even erasing your saved games...are all understandable or acceptable. But, a machine that destroys your $60 game disks, that can't be easily backed up, because you bumped into the entertainment center is unacceptable IMO. Its definately not a terrible machine power wise, but what did they save? $3 or something putting the piece of junk dvd player in the machine?

And then you have the reports of updates bricking the consoles and it doesn't really instill a lot of confidence in the system. And what is with the 90 day warentees? As I understand it this is becoming industry standard for consoles. I know the console market is pretty competitive, but even PC parts which are often installed by people with limited expertise and are very price competitive still all offer a 1 year warentee at least. I guess when you're selling systems at a loss the urge to cut costs wherever you can is pretty strong. But as a consumer, when I see the company not even willing to stand behind the product for a year I start to think there's something fishy going on.

Re:Cost cutting a little out of control?

[jackbird]

Apparently (I didn't do much research on this myself since I don't own an xbox 360) the simple act of changing it from vertical to horizontal positions and vice versa can destroy disks. I'm sorry but I can't describe that behavior as anything less than ridiculous. Particularly since optical drive technology is hardly new.

And the physics of angular momentum is even less new.

Re:Cost cutting a little out of control?

[Phisbut]

I'm sorry but I can't describe that behavior as anything less than ridiculous. Particularly since optical drive technology is hardly new.

DVD players have been around for a while indeed, but how many times have you moved your DVD player (either the one under your TV or the one in your computer) from a horizontal position to a vertical one, while a movie was playing at the same time? I bet those devices would also damage the disc the same way the xbox does.

When the disk starts spinning at high speed inside the device, it basically becomes a gyroscope, and rotating its axis requires (relatively) tremendous force.

Even with all the money in the world, Microsoft can't fight the physics of our universe.

Re:Cost cutting a little out of control?

[Phisbut]

And what is with the 90 day warentees? As I understand it this is becoming industry standard for consoles.

My Wii came with a 1-year warranty, and by registering it online, Nintendo extends that warranty by an extra 90 days, so I got a 15 months warranty on the console.

Maybe it's because Nintendo is quite confident in the quality of its hardware, or they simply have a better customer service, or both. I don't know about the warranties of the other systems.

Re:Only modders?

[saintm]

You are mistaken in thinking that it only affected modded 360s.

Also, MS should of pulled the update as soon as it was apparent it was killing 360s, but they didn't and it affected a lot more units because of that.

I managed to get £50 worth of GAME vouchers to compensate for the update killing my 360, but it was the 3rd time my 360 needed replacing due to shoddy hardware/software.

Problems

[LuciferosX]

A friend of mine has a non-modded 360 and that updated turned his 360 into a brick. So no, it didn't only affect modded systems. Not by a long shot.

Has MS admitted to killing chipped xboxes? well?

[cheekyboy]

1. this happens to brand new out of store machines, no chipping.
2. any chip mods done, are virtually undetectable, because the new rom has a shadow original rom running too, so I dont know
how MS plans to detect that, unless they try to detect the presense of a larger address space or different IO reads to the rom.
3. This could be just a stupid timing bug, not the first time MS has made software errors, but yeah they should have a fail safe
system, and NOT kill xbox, I thought they would do the same as the original and only block you from LIVE, not kill your xbox.

Has MS really claimed their aim was to KILL chipped xboxs?