Class Action Lawsuit Against Seagate

[BFG10K]

It's those 3TB models again, Seagate's version of the "deathstar". It'll be interesting to see the outcome.

http://betanews.com/2016/02/04/seagate-faces-class-action-lawsuit-over-faulty-3tb-hard-drives/

 

[Charlie98]

If those who did purchase Seagate’s 3TB drives will be compensated they are likely receive a small portion of what they originally paid for the drives.

...and the lawyers make all the real money. I think this kind of lawsuit is stupid... what's the point? I have one of these drives... if it dies, I'll go get something else. Jeepers...

At least they brought up the point that Backblaze used consumer drives in a server environment.

 

[ronbo613]

Let's see, so far it's been the CRT lawsuit, the RAM lawsuit and now the Seagate lawsuit. Going by past settlement earnings, I will get nothing.

 

[hhhd1]

Even if consumers didn't end up getting any money, it still should help make companies like seagate think twice before flooding the market with cheap products with no quality control.

 

[myocardia]

...and the lawyers make all the real money. I think this kind of lawsuit is stupid... what's the point?

It allows consumers to be in control of when a corporation who has harmed them in some way are monetarily punished, instead of some government agency or other.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Even if consumers didn't end up getting any money, it still should help make companies like seagate think twice before flooding the market with cheap products with no quality control.

Yeah that's probably the main benifit. I bought two of those drives because they were super cheap on Black Friday, but I don't use them for live data, just backups. So less critical if they fail. The very worse case scenario is I actually need to retrieve a backup and the drive fails on me, and then I have to go to an older backup.

 

[Charlie98]

It allows consumers to be in control of when a corporation who has harmed them in some way are monetarily punished, instead of some government agency or other.

That's the point... the consumers get a pittance out of it, the lawyers get the real loot. You may think it's noble or whatever by punishing The Man, but at the end of the day it's just another moneymaking opportunity for someone, not justice for the consumer.

You want to show a corporation your displeasure with something? Don't buy their stuff anymore.

Personally, if you try to do that, you won't really have much to buy... every manufacturer has put out something substandard... design flaws, bad components, shoddy assembly and QC... it happens on everything from bread to cars to, yes, hard drives. Seagate makes good hard drives, they just screwed the pooch on this one. I'll buy another Seagate drive... just not a 3TB one.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

There wasn't one against the 1TB internal drives from the holidays several years back. Bought four, all died within months from one DOA, one died with a week, another within a month and the last was shortly thereafter.

NewEgg, where I bought them, replaced the first one, but then removed the product page and acted like they never sold the item. That forced people to deal with Seagate. Want a replacement in advance, your dime. Want to send it back for warranty? You dime.

I've not bought a Seagate product sense. I was far from the only affected consumer and I do not remember a CAS on that fiasco. I would urge everyone in this case to partake.

 

[ronbo613]

You want to show a corporation your displeasure with something? Don't buy their stuff anymore.

There you go

 

[sdifox]

That's the point... the consumers get a pittance out of it, the lawyers get the real loot. You may think it's noble or whatever by punishing The Man, but at the end of the day it's just another moneymaking opportunity for someone, not justice for the consumer.

You want to show a corporation your displeasure with something? Don't buy their stuff anymore.

Personally, if you try to do that, you won't really have much to buy... every manufacturer has put out something substandard... design flaws, bad components, shoddy assembly and QC... it happens on everything from bread to cars to, yes, hard drives. Seagate makes good hard drives, they just screwed the pooch on this one. I'll buy another Seagate drive... just not a 3TB one.

Haven't bought any seagates since 2006 or so.

 

[zink77]

You want to show a corporation your displeasure with something? Don't buy their stuff anymore.

I'm sorry but this is just a myth, there has never been a free market, government has always subsidized business and human beings don't behave in any rational way economically. Some part of the market is smart enough to not buy stuff but most people aren't, the smart minority is not enough to punish companies to change their behavior.

Protectionism for the rich and big business by state intervention, radical market interference.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHj2GaPuEhY#t=349

The "asymmetry of information" aka ignorance regarding what counts as a good or bad product is off the charts. Then there is the time and energy (money) a person would lose trying to track/fend off hundreds of different companies predatory practices/shitty products, it is simply physically beyond the resources of any one individual to protect themselves.

Then there are systemic problems at the system level with deaths/births of new generation of kids during some window of some new product and because they have no memory of the past of bad company or have any street smarts with money and they are going to fork over the cash to the big bad company because they are new to the world and can't judge product quality for crap.

We see this all the time in the videogame/media industry. It's probably one of the most brazenly corrupt industries on the planet because they know kids and many are bat shit stupid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act#/media/File:Copyright_term.svg

The only way you'd ever get accountability in our society is if it was radically reconfigured so that the adult participants in the market had some say over companies were managed, I read some interesting ideas of the public being a shareholder in all big companies and when big companies try to pull shit against the public interest they get removed. Either way the only way you'd get accountability from a company selling you stuff is if you were physically close enough to the company to force the issue because there are too many others who are ignorant feeding the company the company can survive off of.

Right now we live in a totally nakedly criminal world and most people are unaware how criminal it really is because they don't have time to sit down and process what is going on.

 

[ronbo613]

I'm sorry but this is just a myth, there has never been a free market, government has always subsidized business and human beings don't behave in any rational way economically. Some part of the market is smart enough to not buy stuff but most people aren't, the smart minority is not enough to punish companies to change their behavior.

Protectionism for the rich and big business by state intervention, radical market interference.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHj2GaPuEhY#t=349

The "asymmetry of information" aka ignorance regarding what counts as a good or bad product is off the charts. Then there is the time and energy (money) a person would lose trying to track/fend off hundreds of different companies predatory practices/shitty products, it is simply physically beyond the resources of any one individual to protect themselves.

Then there are systemic problems at the system level with deaths/births of new generation of kids during some window of some new product and because they have no memory of the past of bad company or have any street smarts with money and they are going to fork over the cash to the big bad company because they are new to the world and can't judge product quality for crap.

We see this all the time in the videogame/media industry. It's probably one of the most brazenly corrupt industries on the planet because they know kids and many are bat shit stupid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act#/media/File:Copyright_term.svg

The only way you'd ever get accountability in our society is if it was radically reconfigured so that the adult participants in the market had some say over companies were managed, I read some interesting ideas of the public being a shareholder in all big companies and when big companies try to pull shit against the public interest they get removed. Either way the only way you'd get accountability from a company selling you stuff is if you were physically close enough to the company to force the issue because there are too many others who are ignorant feeding the company the company can survive off of.

Right now we live in a totally nakedly criminal world and most people are unaware how criminal it really is because they don't have time to sit down and process what is going on.

I'm looking for some kind of connection to Seagate 3TB hard drives, but I don't see one.

 

[zink77]

I'm looking for some kind of connection to Seagate 3TB hard drives, but I don't see one.

It was there: The people who aren't aware of the 3TB drive problem will buy 3TB drives not aware that there are issues/a lawsuit. I said most people aren't rational consumers/aren't informed (aka not aware). Then there are those that will buy anyway and just not care. So there is no real punishment mechanism if the size of the buying population is unconcerned/unaware/doesn't care. AKA there is no self-correction mechanism and hence no free market.

 

[Phynaz]

Let's see, so far it's been the CRT lawsuit, the RAM lawsuit and now the Seagate lawsuit. Going by past settlement earnings, I will get nothing.

I got something like $300 from the LCD class action.

 

[Charlie98]

Protectionism for the rich and big business by state intervention, radical market interference.

You are a little off base there. When a government starts to control or strong-arm private business, it has the ability to pick winners or losers... that's really the problem with American business right now... too much government interference and regulation. It's obvious you don't understand the principles of a free market economy, so I'm not going to waste my breath.

It is your responsibility to make a correct purchase, including what will happen if it goes bad (i.e. warranty details or return policy.) People knowingly buy substandard products all the time (cheap crap from China vs better made American product, for example) because they place the emphasis on price over quality. I bought my 3TB Seagate because it was the lowest priced drive at the time, even with the understanding it only had a 1-year warranty. I could have spent twice as much and got a WD Black with a 5-year warranty, but I didn't. If my drive dies tomorrow, well, OK, I'll junk it and go get something else.

 

[sdifox]

You are a little off base there. When a government starts to control or strong-arm private business, it has the ability to pick winners or losers... that's really the problem with American business right now... too much government interference and regulation. It's obvious you don't understand the principles of a free market economy, so I'm not going to waste my breath.

It is your responsibility to make a correct purchase, including what will happen if it goes bad (i.e. warranty details or return policy.) People knowingly buy substandard products all the time (cheap crap from China vs better made American product, for example) because they place the emphasis on price over quality. I bought my 3TB Seagate because it was the lowest priced drive at the time, even with the understanding it only had a 1-year warranty. I could have spent twice as much and got a WD Black with a 5-year warranty, but I didn't. If my drive dies tomorrow, well, OK, I'll junk it and go get something else.

Lulz too much control from the US government? Are you serious?

 

[myocardia]

That's the point... the consumers get a pittance out of it, the lawyers get the real loot. You may think it's noble or whatever by punishing The Man, but at the end of the day it's just another moneymaking opportunity for someone, not justice for the consumer.

Okay, let me phrase it in a way that maybe you'll understand: the entire purpose is to monetarily penalize the company. That's all, nothing more. The fact that any consumer gets any remittance whatsoever is just icing on the cake for the consumer.

You want to show a corporation your displeasure with something? Don't buy their stuff anymore.

Personally, if you try to do that, you won't really have much to buy... every manufacturer has put out something substandard... design flaws, bad components, shoddy assembly and QC... it happens on everything from bread to cars to, yes, hard drives. Seagate makes good hard drives, they just screwed the pooch on this one. I'll buy another Seagate drive... just not a 3TB one.

Thank you for outlining the reasons why "your way" of punishing them would never work. If you want to punish something that only exists to make profits, you do so by punishing them monetarily, preferably in very, very large amounts. The larger the amount, the less likely that company, or any other company on Earth, will do that same thing again.

 

[skriefal]

Even if consumers didn't end up getting any money, it still should help make companies like seagate think twice before flooding the market with cheap products with no quality control.

No, they'll keep doing it and hope that they don't get caught "this time." At best they might improve things very briefly, and then the greed quickly sets back in.

 

[zink77]

You are a little off base there. When a government starts to control or strong-arm private business, it has the ability to pick winners or losers... that's really the problem with American business right now... too much government interference and regulation.

I'm sorry to tell you but the actual problem is not what you think it is, real world problems are complex and you need knowledge about what is actually going on to understand the nature of the problem. The actual problem is that the average person is ignorant and irrational. AKA people are not qualified to participate in a free market society beyond the simplest kind of things the human mind can manage. The human brain did not evolve to make sound decisions in modern complex environments.

Does anyone really have any inkling of a clue of the actual quality of many products they buy day in and day out? The knowledge you need to assess grows exponentially. It is just beyond a single human being to make decisions about a whole range of things in a modern technological society due to the minds natural limits. One of the many kinds of problems related to this is "the market for lemons".

The uninformed buyer's create an adverse selection problem that drives high-quality from the market. There are tonnes of examples of successful businesses that are net negative for society as a whole because stupid is where the profits are. People don't exist in a vacuum from the universe and there are systemic and perverse effects that a group of uninformed individuals can inflict on others without their say so via the market mechanism.

 

[BFG10K]

You want to show a corporation your displeasure with something? Don't buy their stuff anymore.

Unfortunately this doesn't really happen. Look at the GTX970 missing RAM/TMU fiasco, yet the card sells like hotcakes. nVidia also locks out their own paying customers from hardware PhysX if a USB monitor is plugged in, yet they continue raking profits.

Companies exist to make money and class action lawsuits take away some of the money, which hurts them. Companies don't care? Think again:

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/...ent-bars-class-action-lawsuit-but-is-it-legal

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/new...rms-of-Services-Forbids-Class-Action-Lawsuits

Also in the IBM Deathstar case they settled for $100 with users: http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php/384759-IBM-Deskstar-75-GXP-Class-Action-Settlement

 

[XavierMace]

Unfortunately this doesn't really happen. Look at the GTX970 missing RAM/TMU fiasco, yet the card sells like hotcakes. nVidia also locks out their own paying customers from hardware PhysX if a USB monitor is plugged in, yet they continue raking profits.

Perhaps because some people are happy with their GTX 970's?

 

[coercitiv]

Unfortunately this doesn't really happen. Look at the GTX970 missing RAM/TMU fiasco, yet the card sells like hotcakes.

The GTX970 fiasco does not result in increased chances of product failure. A better example would be the mobile Geforce 8000 series disaster, which was bound to die in 6 months to 2-3 years of usage depending on average load and/or cooling.

Under the terms of the settlement, eligible class members will be entitled to a replacement GPU chip and/or reimbursement of previous expenses related to the defect, including previous chip repairs or replacements.

You are right though, Nvidia was such a giant by then, this crisis did little to crack their brand image and sales. Nevertheless some remembered, I will buy Nvidia GPUs only if they have by far the better product on the market, if it's a wash I'll go with the competition.

It also cost Nvidia a lot of money, I bet the $200 million they set aside for this crisis was only part of the true cost they had to pay. People were replacing chips 2-3 times during the lifetime of the device, and most laptop warranties for this particular defect were extended to 5 years.

 

[redzo]

I was very skeptical about the backblaze report due to their use case, but too many consumers started to complain about the premature death of their similar models online.

Any manufacturer definitely deserves a big slap for selling unreliable products to consumers and/or exaggeration about their reliability.

 

[sdifox]

I was very skeptical about the backblaze report due to their use case, but too many consumers started to complain about the premature death of their similar models online.

Any manufacturer definitely deserves a big slap for selling unreliable products to consumers and/or exaggeration about their reliability.

Backblaze use case should be considered low load. It is mostly write once and forget. If a hdd cannot handle that, then it should be called a floppy disk.

 

[bononos]

That's the point... the consumers get a pittance out of it, the lawyers get the real loot. You may think it's noble or whatever by punishing The Man, but at the end of the day it's just another moneymaking opportunity for someone, not justice for the consumer.

You want to show a corporation your displeasure with something? Don't buy their stuff anymore.
.........

So what if I can't get justice, I'd settle for a kick to the nuts to the offending corporation. Its not feasible to punish brands by 'buying something else' in heavily concentrated markets and Seagate is 1 of the top 2 manufacturers.