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.

Comments

Re:I don't remember how many drives I had back the

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

"Up to $10"

[jlv]

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.

Re:"Up to $10"

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

If the lawyer fees are capped at a certain percentage of the money actually distributed, then there will be an incentive for the lawyers to actually make some effort to find the beneficiaries and get them some cash. As it stands now, the lawyers get a percentage of "estimated" compensation, deduct all their expenses and make a few news paper ads and go home. The money not distributed goes back to the defendant. So they don't have any incentive to actually distribute cash.

Re:"Up to $10"

[tlhIngan]

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.

Then go file your own lawsuit for whatever money you'd get.

Class actions happen because there's a hole in the current legal system - as in "steal from many and get away scot-free". If you steal $1,000,000 from 1 person you can probably get a lawsuit to reclaim it. But if you steal $1 from 1,000,000 people, you can get away scot-free.

Think of all the times your cellphone carrier jacks up your rates - if you're on a contract, technically they're not supposed to, but they do. And what are you going to do about it? If they jack it up $5 4 months in a 2 year contract, that's $100 over the term. Are you going to sue them to reclaim that?

Probably not - between court filing fees ($25-40 typically) and having to take a day off, you're probably just going to sit there and complain and pay up. Meanwhile, the carrier makes an extra few million dollars.

And even if you do go through, they'll not show up (lawyers cost money), and take the default judgement. Then they'll pay you back your $100, because they factored that 99.99% of people wouldn't, but the few bored enough to do so, well, it's not a big deal.

Re:I Build My Own PC's.

[Ellis D. Tripp]

There is a place to submit a claim for raw drives, as well as computers....

You're probably NOT owed $10

[Billy the Mountain]

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.

Re:tl;dr: some lawyer gets rich

[ranton]

everybody else gets $10. It's not even worth my time to file.

I put a pretty high value on my time, but it just took me about a minute to potentially claim $30. I would have to value an hour of my time at about $2000 for this to not be worth the time to file. Although if I have to cash a physical check the math changes dramatically.

Re:Does the lawyer's cut depend on this?

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

I don't know about that. I had forgotten all about the DRAM lawsuit against RAMBUS et al until a couple months ago when a $85 check for my portion of the settlement arrived in the mail. These things DO pay out.

Yeah, get paid to fight unscrupulous companies

[raymorris]

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.

Texas among lowest taxed states

[raymorris]

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...

Re:tl;dr: some lawyer gets rich

[bobmajdakjr]

no kidding, this was the easiest 60$ i probably won't ever get. but if it does... at some point this year... i will be very confused for about 10 seconds and then shout yolo all the way to my mobile banking app.