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Woman Wins $10,000 Lawsuit Against Microsoft Over Windows 10 Upgrades (seattletimes.com)
An anonymous reader shares this story from the Seattle Times:
A few days after Microsoft released Windows 10 to the public last year, Teri Goldstein's computer started trying to download and install the new operating system. The update, which she says she didn't authorize, failed. Instead, the computer she uses to run her Sausalito, California, travel-agency business slowed to a crawl. It would crash, she says, and be unusable for days at a time. "I had never heard of Windows 10," Goldstein said. "Nobody ever asked me if I wanted to update."
When outreach to Microsoft's customer support didn't fix the issue, Goldstein took the software giant to court, seeking compensation for lost wages and the cost of a new computer. She won. Last month, Microsoft dropped an appeal and Goldstein collected a $10,000 judgment from the company.
Microsoft denies any wrongdoing, and says they only halted their appeal to avoid the cost of further litigation.
When outreach to Microsoft's customer support didn't fix the issue, Goldstein took the software giant to court, seeking compensation for lost wages and the cost of a new computer. She won. Last month, Microsoft dropped an appeal and Goldstein collected a $10,000 judgment from the company.
Microsoft denies any wrongdoing, and says they only halted their appeal to avoid the cost of further litigation.
...then the forced upgrades ought to be worth at least that.
Not a couple of weeks ago, I got a card in the mail saying there had been some kind of settlement over front loading washing machines. I went to the web site, clicked some options (it seemed legit; they asked for no personal information, and you had to enter two validation codes from the card) and it seems I'm to get $50 for some defect or other related to mold and my washing machine, a machine which never stopped working and I still use (there is some mold on the door seal, I just wipe it off periodically, other than that it cleans just fine).
If my desktop computer which worked acceptably began downloading a new operating system and then quit working right after, shouldn't I be entitled at least $50 in a class action? My guess is Microsoft didn't quit this lawsuit because it just didn't feel like litigating that day, they did to halt the contagion of a precedent of four or five figure legal decisions over their Win 10 upgrade.
For a lot of use cases, it's not hard to see high costs: new machine, new application version(s) to be installed, data migrated, loss of use, $10k isn't entirely out of range in many business use cases.
I just kind of hope MS ends up with one of those disclaimers in their financial report explaining how they are setting aside $500 million to handle lawsuits resulting from their forced and negligent forced upgrades.
As an IT company who has repaired literally hundreds of failed updates, as well as failed roll backs to the previous operation system (using Microsoft's own "revert me to my previous operation system" restore option, which had maybe a 60% success rate), the cost to consumers has likely been staggering in the aggregate.
While profitable to my company, I can't help but feel like there needs to be a very quick verdict against Microsoft, ruling several hundred dollars to anyone who can show (Via invoice or other means) that they had to pay money to repair the damage/inconvenience Microsoft directly caused as a result of their underhanded tactics to upgrade the world to Windows 10.
If this were a mistake made by some fledgling software company it might be excusable as an oversight, but this is a many decades old software company, with many legal experiences under their belt... this should never have happened and there should be actual repercussions.
What does one have to do with the other? If [cost of litigation] + [probabilit of losing] * $10.000 is greater than $10,000 then you obviously just pay the $10,000. Other than the case where $10,000 will bankrupt the company (in which case litigate since who cares about another debtor) the valuation of the company is irrelevant.
Of course there's also the "how many other people will try this" factor but again losing an appeal increases that risk so keeping on going isn't necessarily the best choice there either.
That's fine by me. I actually upgraded to Windows 10 voluntarily (I write Windows software, so I need to be up-to-date) and don't buy the spyware boogieman stories (it's simple to turn most of that crap off), but frankly, Microsoft's heavy-handed tactics to trick people into upgrading without their explicit consent has been absolutely inexcusable, and shouldn't be rewarded.
I was... moderately hopeful that we were seeing a new Microsoft, embracing open source, less hostile to others, slightly more humble now that they're not the only dominant player in the industry. Nope, instead, we see a new "fuck you, paying customer, we know what's best for you" attitude. They've always played hardball with competitors. Customers, if not treated *well*, per se, were at least left the hell alone once they had Windows installed. Now, they're being actively harassed and pushed into Microsoft's monetization plan.
What's baffling to me is that Microsoft took what should have been a golden PR opportunity (free Windows upgrade), and turned it into a PR disaster.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
It's also possible that the machine was reasonably old and that while the value of a new computer was not sufficiently better than the value of the system in operation (before it broke) to justify a purchase, it is now, when making the old system work is probably as expensive in terms of time invested as is setting up the new machine. So you get value both from newer hardware *and* saved time.
Ezekiel 23:20
My guess is now a lot of people are going to be suing MS over this. While they deny they did any wrong doing, the court saw it otherwise.
The class action lawsuits. Some lawyers are going to get rich.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
It's not funny, that's actually what the new Windows 10 Upgrade dialog looks like, happened to me personally.
It just said tomorrow it will upgrade to windows 10, if you don't access this dialog by then, it will go on automatically.
If I was gone over the weekend, as I usually leave my computer on in case I need to remote in, by the time I was back, it would have upgraded without any interaction.
The level of lack of respect from Microsoft is truly incredible.
Most people would probably be better off filing at small claims court in situations like this. With class action suits, it seems that the lawyers end up with a bunch of money, and the people that were actually wronged get coupons for free stuff they never wanted . At small claims court, you don't need a lawyer, and you will probably win a fair bit more actual money provided you can show actual damages like this person did. It might be a bit more difficult if you aren't using your computer to run a business, but I'm sure that you could claim any expenses from taking your computer in and getting it fixed, plus money for all that hardship.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
My guess is that MS will just roll out a quick update, with a revised EULA.
You MS fanboys are amazing. You even try to justify MS bricking hardware.
We paid for Win7, so leave my OS the hell alone.
Win7 is still supported, so upgrading it should be completely optional. Again, leave my paid-for and still-supported OS the hell alone.
You cannot agree to have your computer fucked up in an automatic update in an EULA. It seems like the judge agreed.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I used to do quite a bit of Windows dev work also. I have Windows 7 in a virtual machine just for that. I haven't been doing nearly as much lately mostly by choice. I do most of that Windows dev work with VS2008 even though I have VS all the way up to 2012. The reason I use 2008 is because newer versions just seemed to get slower and harder to use.
When I read the article the other day about MS C++ compiler adding in telemetry info into programs compiled with it as a default option without any notice that it was doing it and having to explicitly turn it off, I was glad I hadn't continued getting new versions of VS. A Lot of the stuff I do is security related and I cant have things in there that I don't know are in there. That is a quick way to lose contracts and get sued.
Explain this to me:
I buy a piece of hardware in good faith that it contains a genuine FTDI USB-serial chipset. The manufacturer also believes that their vendor has used the correct chipset, but actually, the cut-price manufacturer has swapped in a counterfeit chip.
I let Win10 take control of my computer, and in due course it applies all updates as per the MS requirements.
At some point in the future FTDI releases a driver update that *bricks* counterfeit chipsets. This update is applied to my computer by MS without my approval or knowledge, since updates on Win10 are no longer under my control.
So WTF just happened?
How is this better for me?
PS: Anyone skeptical can Google and learn a bit, my scenario as presented above is 100% valid and based on recent events.
Ford execs decided it was cheaper to let people burn, and pay the cost in court, than it was to fix the issue.
The memo cost them a lot of goodwill, but they are still around.
MS is probably looking that memo over right now thinking the same thing.
Cost to pay pissed off citizens is cheaper than fixing Win10, so....
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.