Did you buy anything from Microsoft's glum Apple Store knockoff? You may be owed $100 Microsoft will cough up $1.2m to settle a class-action lawsuit after its retail stores leaked a little too much information about shoppers' payment cards. On Friday, the Redmond giant agreed to give up roughly seven minutes of its quarterly revenue to a gaggle of Microsoft Store customers who claimed that their receipts …
November 2013 to February 2017 is 40 months, I think.
1.2m settlement, minus lawyers fees (400k) and 10k for the first guy, leaves 790k for paying out the rest. Call it 800k.
At 100 dollars a payout, that's 8,000 purchases from the store. In 40 months. 200 purchases from their app store a month.
I had no idea it was doing so well.
@ Koswix
I think the article is about the Microsoft bricks and mortar stores.
We would call them shops where I come from, if we had any. If your maths is right I don't think any of them will stay open for much longer, unless Microsoft is happy to keep subsidising them.
8,000 total purchases in 40 months sounds like a bunch of people standing around doing nothing.
say what you want about them, but Microsoft are pretty good at selling stuff to people. How did such a non compliance issue a) happen in the first place b) Go on for so long without any audits or checks spotting it c) Get this far in a court of law instead of them settling at the first opportunity with such a weak case their end?
"Microsoft are pretty good at selling stuff to people"
Really? Microsoft used (still uses for all I know?) Digital River to sell software rather than create their own software store. When I last used it it was a complete bug ridden mess, which also gave you just 30 days to download the software and then it was lost forever unless you paid for a premium download which retained it (wtf, have to pay extra just so they keep a link alive!).
I was always amazed that Microsoft needed to outsource something like that and risk losing sales when every other major company seemed to handle it on their own platform reasonably well.
This was 8 year sago, though maybe they've changed.
I'm shocked Microsoft has 'Stores' I had no idea they existed.
From the amount of the payout, I think most of the public shares my surprise.
I wonder if there are no antitrust violations going on and Microsoft's lawyers were bored. A thirty second phone call could have fixed the problem...
My bet is the lawyers tried to argue that there are no Microsoft Stores, and were 'shocked' to find out there was such a thing. They probably argued 'no stores' for over a year before someone showed them a picture of a store on an IPhone and they decided to settle.
The stores may be subsidized as more of a marketing scheme than a retail channel.
I went to visit one when I wanted to try out a Surface Book. The price difference was way too much to justify buying blindly when I could drive out to a nearby mall and find out if it really worked. I ended up buying the Surface Book, but I bought it online where I was able to get a discount and customize it; but I probably wouldn't have if I hadn't had the chance to see it in person first.
--Alternatively, they may just be counting on no one showing up to claim the cash. I'm betting class action suits are like mail-in rebates, but even worse.
That the receipts contained the first six and last four digits isn't really surprising - those are the rules set by the payment card companies, so those are the rules known to most people working on payment card systems, and six+four is the norm for receipts in many other countries.
Surprising that the terminal manufacturer wasn't aware of a law governing printed credit card receipts though.
Surely this isn't the same Microsoft that wants us to restrict us to their app store "for our safety", no?
Bwahahaha - you couldn't make it up..
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