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Microsoft Facing Class-Action Suit Over Xbox Live Points
An anonymous reader tips news that a lawyer in Pennsylvania has filed a class-action lawsuit against Microsoft, alleging that the company's handling of Xbox Live transactions is, in some cases, fraudulent.
"Samuel Lassoff, of Horsham, PA, said an invoice he received earlier this month from Microsoft included charges for purchases he couldn't complete due to a balky download system — and he claimed it wasn't an accident. Microsoft 'engaged in a scheme to unjustly enrich itself through their fraudulent handling' of his account, Lassoff charged in papers filed earlier this week in US District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania. ... 'Microsoft breached that contract by collecting revenues for digital goods and services which were not provided,' Lassoff said in his lawsuit."
He blames a "balky download system" but when you buy something on xbox live. It doesn't not matter if the download completes. The item is tied to your account when you buy it, and you can download it and redownload it whenever you want. As the article points out this lawyer also seems a little shady (suing a Casino because a drunk attacked him).
One thing the article did mention that I liked was that MS is considering doing away with points. I know I always have an odd number of points on my account because of so many different denominations of DLC prices. Thats one thing I like about my PS3, it charges my credit card directly OR I can chose to add a certain amount of money to my account. Not trying to incite a flamewar between PS3/360, I have both and love them both for different reasons.
Yeah, except it's basically just a load of complete and utter bollocks from a serial ambulance chaser:
"As for Lassoff, he's no stranger to suing big tech companies and other organizations. Records show he sued Google in 2006, claiming the search ads he placed fell victim to click fraud. He also sued Bally's Casino in Atlantic City in 2005, claiming he was attacked by a drunken patron while sitting at a poker table."
The problem with his argument is that you can redownload content whenever you want to, so even if the download servers did fail for a couple of days, you'd still be able to download it after that. Despite having spent a small fortune on XBox Live, I've never had any problems accessing content I've bought. The issue is that his argument doesn't even really make sense- Microsoft would have nothing to gain by preventing users downloading content they've bought because it would mean those users wouldn't go on to buy any more content afterwards. It's not like DLC really costs them anything much to provide, it's not too far off being just pure profit, they're not just going to risk turning that away. Even if you do run into problems it's not like Microsoft support wont help either, when my original XBox 360 died through RROD they gave me 4200 points when I complained about my DLC not being tied to my replacement console anymore and then tied my content to my new console for me.
This story is about as stupid as the Visual Studio tabs one from the other day. Really, has it come to this? Slashdot is so desperate for anti-MS stories now that it really has resorted to just scraping the bottom of the barrel?
Microsoft perpetually holds between $5-10 of my money, and has for a couple years now. Every time I want to purchase some DLC it's pretty much always the case that my current points pool is short of the price by 100-400 points. Of course they don't sell 100 points - you have to buy 500 or 1000 (I forget the exact amounts offered). I'm sure I'm far from the only one in this situation. It's almost like a superman scam. I wonder how much in total of unredeemed cash they sit on each month.
Except it sounds like this is neither malice, stupidity or a mistake. It's hard to determine what the actual complaint is, but from the Facebook page (I won't dignify it with a link since that's the guy's whole intention, but it's called "Microsoft Point Fraud Class Action Lawsuit"):
"Defendant Microsoft Corporation received and retained money paid by Plaintiffs in response to incomplete and or partial downloads of digital goods and services and refused refund of same."
That implies a massive misunderstanding of the system. Points aren't a bank that you can pay into and extract money from at will, they're more like a gift card you can redeem at some future date, and neither does MS make any guarantees about the date of redemption, instead they allow you to re-download your content at any time. That means if your initial download fails to complete, or you can't download because the download system is "balky", you just try again later (and honestly, the only time I've ever had problems with downloads on Live is during dash updates, when it can be a bit flaky for the first few hours as everyone's getting the same download at the same time - more likely if he's having continual problems downloading it's his connection rather than the download system that is "balky"). Either way, once you've spent your points it's up to you to download your content.
As someone else already said, once MS has your money they have no real interest in not delivering the downloads, all that will do is risk deterring customers from making future purchases (compared to the frankly tiny cost of providing the download). I'm all for giving big companies short shrift when they step out of line, and god knows MS have made some major misteps in the past, but this just looks like a case of a slimy lawyer either trying to hit it big by suing $RANDOM_BIG_TECH_COMPANY, or at the very least trying to get his face and name all over the internet.
Let's just SUE 'EM!
The article makes no mention of Mr. Lassoff's experience when he contacted the Xbox Live support line, and I would expect that if it were less than expedient, that would be a major part of this lawsuit. I have a feeling that he didn't contact them at all, and instead is going straight to suing them. Now don't get me wrong... I absolutely despise the points system due to the fact that the point packs are not proportional to item costs, and that IS intentionally misleading... but it is not fraudulent or illegal, and the points system itself is not what the lawsuit is about.
Quoted FTA:
As for Lassoff, he's no stranger to suing big tech companies and other organizations. Records show he sued Google in 2006, claiming the search ads he placed fell victim to click fraud. He also sued Bally's Casino in Atlantic City in 2005, claiming he was attacked by a drunken patron while sitting at a poker table.
Google is known for their strict policies regarding click fraud, and they are very good at detecting it and very good at not charging the victims and not paying the perpetrators when it happens. This man must be afraid of phones or something, because a simple phone call should have resolved that issue as well. And as for the casino incident..... suing the casino because a patron attacked you? Are you fucking kidding me?
If this class action suit isn't thrown right the fuck out of court, what little hope I have left for our nation's judicial system will be lost.
The point is not if this is an anti-Microsoft story, there are too many to count, but that he is standing up to demand justice vs a large corp. Remember that a good portion of the profits for the sale of any product goes to their legal department. In other words, you are financing both your defence and theirs if you sue them. Those EULA are so protective that they often go against legislated consumer rights and against, state, province or even federal law. People don't know and believe the company is actually entitled to all these obscene conditions.
That being said, Microsoft seems insists on retaining their bully image and some of us don't respond well to that. If at least they would innovate, at least there would be some pros once in a while.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
I can confirm that the Microsoft server do not always hold the content on their servers. I had bought a dozen or so songs from the Zune marketplace, then after an update I lost media rights to play these purchased songs. When I went to re-download the songs, they are no longer available on the Zune Marketplace. I called Customer Support (in India), and they are if course unable to assist. They blamed me for not backing up my license file. They sugested that I burn all my purchased songs to a CD for a backup. I tried to explain that was the reason why I purchased the Zune in the first place, to get rid of the CD media. So do not always assume this content is available to be downloaded again, which is a major issue with the XBOX, since you cant backup any of the content.
I don't mind that they sell points instead of using money directly - in fact, because you can buy "Points Cards" at various brick-and-mortar or online retailers (rather than buying points directly through the Xbox) it isn't that uncommon to see cards carrying $20 worth of points on sale for $15 or less. This couldn't really happen if the system was simply a dollar-for-dollar transaction.
The thing that bugs me is that most of the content on the Xbox Live Marketplace - at least in the way of games - costs something that is a multiple of $5. A Live Arcade game might be $5 or $10 (which is 400 or 800 points, respectively, unless the points are bought at a discount), while an Xbox or Xbox360 game for download might be 1600 ($20) or more. In essence, 400 points = $5.
However, when you buy points, you buy them in multiples...of 500. If you only want a single 400-point game, you have to buy 500 points, and have 100 points left over (and 100 points may as well be 0, unless you're buying an item for your avatar, or perhaps some video downloads, or you're gonna buy more points).
Please, MS, sell the points in multiples of $5. I know that selling them 500 at a time means people have leftovers and that's money in your bank, though, so it's not going to happen.