Comment by dangus
16 hours ago
I would encourage affected customers to go to small claims court. You’ll probably get a default judgment. Small claims court was created for just this type of issue.
16 hours ago
I would encourage affected customers to go to small claims court. You’ll probably get a default judgment. Small claims court was created for just this type of issue.
IMO it would be better if there was a general mechanism to prevent profiting from corrupt business practices. For example, a court could determine how much money Microsoft made by selling perpetual licenses that turned out to be a lie, add interest, add a 50% penalty, and require Microsoft to pay all of that into a trust to be collected by any customers harmed.
The point would not be so much to help the customers but to cause the actual cost to Microsoft to be sufficiently high as to disincentivize corrupt behavior.
The general mechanism is lawsuits; in this case class action lawsuits.
And this mechanism is pretty ineffective.
Class action lawsuits usually end up with settlements where the offender pays much less than the harm they caused, and those harmed get almost nothing. Even if it does go all the way to a court verdict, the sentence is usually insufficient. And the process is long and expensive.
I don't really know what the solution is, but the current system clearly isn't working. And I don't think it was really designed for the scale of mega corporations with hundreds of thousands or even millions of customers.
You can do class action litigation, but that takes years and the lawyers collect 30-50% of any settlement. The economics for customers don't make sense.
Right. And IMO it works poorly. It’s extremely common to see a settlement such that the company still ends up ahead on its problematic behavior.
The Office 2024 license quoted in comment [1] says that "class action lawsuits ... aren't allowed" (but only if you live in US). Truly free country where you a free to even waive your right to sue.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48341968
2 replies →
Not even as a deterrence?
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But you most likely signed a binding arbitration clause in the TOS
Did I sign anything? EULAs aren’t necessarily 100% enforceable.
What would a reasonable person expect out of the transaction?
Which promises and verbiage in the marketing material contradict the EULA?
Same result and then Microsoft would be paying for arbitration
But they’ve got you. Nobody uses Microsoft office turdware unless they’re locked in and have to.
You lose access to it. You’re cooked.
If you’re cooked because of Microsoft’s willful destruction of property, that just means it’s not a small claim anymore.
I actually have a retiree in mind to whom I’ll have to recommend LibreOffice https://libreoffice.org
You’re right, I’m sure nobody’s made any kind of mass activation scripts that you could find online and get a better experience than paying customers.
In Australia, the ACCC. They made Apple change their warranties.