Slashdot Mirror
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.
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 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.
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.
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.