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If You Owned a PC With a DVD Drive You Might Be Able To Claim $10 (theverge.com)
If you owned a PC with a DVD drive more than 10 years ago, you're probably owed $10. From a report on The Verge: A class-action lawsuit is now accepting claims after Sony, NEC, Panasonic, and Hitachi-LG were accused of inflating the prices of optical drives sold to PC makers like Dell and HP. If you bought a PC with a DVD drive between April 1st 2003 and December 31st 2008, you'll be able to claim $10 for each drive as part of the class-action lawsuit. It appears you don't need to provide any proof of purchase -- the settlement administrators are simply collecting names, email addresses, and the number of drives owned at the moment. You'll need to submit a claim before July 1st, and the money won't be released until other defendants in the litigation have settled.
Some lawyer gets rich, and everybody else gets $10. It's not even worth my time to file.
Oh, and the companies named are just going to just pass the cost on to new customers, so we're all going to get fucked by this.
Ill give you $10 to shut the fuck up.
I'm pretty sure that I bought thousands of computers with DVD drives.
I don't remember how many drives I had back then. At least 5-6 from owned systems and ones built for others.
That appears to be part of the point of this class action -- Optical drives were absolutely ubiquitous, and the lawsuit is constructed to send a strong anti-trust message. By fixing prices, manufacturers created a huge artificial cost across the IT spectrum -- from individual home users to enterprise IT purchasing. And since the 2000s, IT spending is a non-trivial part of individual consumers' and business' budgets. The point is to make them feel the pain over price-fixing of a very common and often-replaced device.
But you can give me $10 anyway.
Therefore the correct number to write down on the claim sheet is 83.
In the end, especially in light of the "no proof of purchase required", everyone will probably get $1.43 per drive, or less. Meanwhile, those driving the class action suit will pull in $25M, or more.
You'll need to submit a claim before July 1st, and the money won't be released until other defendants in the litigation have settled.
It sounds like your chances of actually getting any money are slim. Probably all this does is raise the damages so the lawyers get a bigger payday.
Sometme back AT&T ripped me off for over $600 in overcharges. Eventually there was a huge class action lawsuit. It dragged on forever, but eventually the ruling was in favor of the plaintiffs. After another year or so I received my check--for eight cents!. The only ones who collected were the lawyers for both sides. If anyone here expects to get more than a few pennies out of this, you are deluded.
Residency requirement. FTFA: Arizona, California, District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, or Wisconsin.
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
The point is to make them feel the pain over making a profit.
Fixed that for you.
Great! Now, we just need 374,999,999 more posts from the rest of the computer owners.
I don't remember either. Probably in the millions.
Apple is making an absurd amount of profit.
Just like Volkswagen. US Customers get millions, and the European customers still pay a thousand per year in tax for having a Diesel car, without seeing any of it back. The sue-culture is apparently good for something...
TEN DOLLARS for EVERYONE
My Newegg order history shows 8 total DVD drives. Plus one laptop with a DVD. Dang,within the years 2003-2008... reduces it to 2 drives, one laptop with a DVD. I'm sure there were more dammit... Then again it doesn't say I have to prove it. I bought some locally from the local computer store. If I got $30 from these guys I would be shocked.
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
While that's true, it's not necessarily *bad*. Without class actions, or if class actions weren't lucrative for the lawyers who organize them, the companies would just get away with it. The lawyers basically a reward for going after companies v who screw consumers over, with sufficient investigation to prove in court what the companies did and how consumers were harmed.
It's not a perfect system, but I'd rather have (proper) class actions than not have them. When a company screws me out of $5 or $10 I'd rather a lawyer go after them (and get the $5) then just let the company get away with screwing epople2 over.
I guess with you living in Mom's basement and having her feed you when you happen to get up to the ground level 10 bucks doesn't mean much to you.
Texas is one of the least-taxed states. We have no state income tax (on individuals) and reasonable sales taxes. Texas total state tax burden is 7.6%. Compare California, Wisconsin, and llinois at about 11%. Some states are 12%. Only Alaska is less than 7.1%.
https://taxfoundation.org/stat...
VERIFIED email addresses, too.
Follow the money on this one.
Even the Constitution says you shouldn't give a shit about less than $20.
The Seventh Amendment,
Mom is lazy so she just tosses a care package downstairs every week.
I think i did not. Back then i only bought used thinkpads, so i did not by that drive from a manufacturer - and probably these were made before 2003 (I anyway used mainly external USB-dvd drive). Next step (around 2008) was to buy laptops without optical drives embedded (i had an external one+did not see the need for installing OSses-1G USB drives worked fine for debian/ubuntu).
This is awesome. I can document 6 laptops and 24 standalone drives since 2004. That's $290, less 289.99 in lawyers fees, of course...
Since "you don't need to provide any proof of purchase" the headline should be:
Here's how to get $10 free!
At the moment I have about a dozen.
Oh, that's not what you meant? Learn to fucking write then: " ... at the moment, the settlement administrators are simply collecting names, email addresses, and the number of drives owned [at the time]".
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
PSAW!
Everybody knows diesel DVD players are less noisy on SONAR than nuclear DVD players.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
But yet writing about your feelings about it and submitting your comment to Slashdot for $0.00 IS worth it?
Here is the only link that matters. Pointing to the Verge is pointless.
My PC didn't have one -- though I paid a lot of money for. It did have a button operated cup holder though which I thought was pretty neat.
Same here!
I lent nearly $1,000 to deadbeats on Prosper who never paid back a dime.
I got payments from 2 separate class action suits against Prosper since then, but both were for under $10.
The part that angers me the most is that Prosper was SUPPOSED to turn those debts over to your choice of 2 collection agencies they supposedly employed. I selected one but never heard a THING again. For all I know, they never even really sent anything to collections at all? How would you know as an individual lender?
It would be interesting to compare costs of different systems. In the US, state Attorney's General offices handle some of these things, the FTC handles some, etc. Each spends resources (money) to do so and each collects fines from time to time. Here, when the Attorney General and the regulatory agencies let things fall through the cracks, any concerned citizen can address via a class action, and the bigger the problem, the bigger is the incentive to organize a class action.
I haven't seen any studies, I would like to, but my guess is that the three systems together may be more effective than any one alternative.
I vaguely remember buying somewhere between 2 and 500,000 PCs in that time period. To be safe, I'll claim the 500,000.
I agree. Last one I did was the LCD monitor one. Got around 100 bucks for doing nothing more than filling out a web form...about a minute of time. If this one pans out, it's another easy 90 bucks or so for me. I'll spend a minute of time, to get easy money. May not be much, but it's more than I had.
I don't either. I wrote down 2 machines and 3 external drives because I can actually prove that I own that many of them, not because I'm sure how many I bought. I know it was a lot more than that.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Of the FOUR class action suits I've "subscribed" to in the past, I've received exactly ZERO dollars.
Because, frankly, once the lawyers have your name and can make their money, there is no real motivation for them to actually obtain anything for you.
I refuse this sort of thing now on principal.
my state is not listed.