ATI Class Action Lawsuit

[RedTeck]

Haven't seen anything recent about this but saw an add in USA Weekend about it.

http://www.aticlassaction.com/

"You are a class member if, while residing in the United States, you purchased for your own personal use and not for resale an ATI graphics card (that means a card built by or for ATI, not by or for another company such as Asus, Diamond, Gigabyte, Palit, Sapphire, or VisionTek) from one of the following series: Radeon® 9550; Radeon® 9800; Radeon® x700; Radeon® x800; Radeon® x850; Radeon® x1300; Radeon® x1600; Radeon® x1800; Radeon® x1900; All-in-Wonder® 9800; All-in-Wonder® 2006; All-in-Wonder® x600; All-in-Wonder® x800; All-in-Wonder® x1800; All-in-Wonder® x1900; or any FireGL® or FireMV® series of graphics cards. You must have made your purchase during the period from January 1, 2003 to March 31, 2006."

[llama]

Yup, it's real.

I've been a paid consultant on this case for one of the class attorneys for a few years now. That it is based on video cards that you probably bought 5 years ago (or more!) is a testament to the speediness of our legal system. ;-)

-Llama

[OOZ662]

The basis of all that is pretty pathetic. Woo America.

[llama]

The basis of all that is pretty pathetic. Woo America.

How so? ATI claimed these cards were HDCP compliant and ready, and in fact NONE OF THEM ARE.

While it is true that HDCP monitors weren't generally available when these cards is sold, no one put a gun to ATI's head and said "market them as HDCP compatible."

What if you bought some hardware today that advertised it was "Windows 7 compatible,"  and then next year when you got a Windows 7 machine the manufacturer told you "Nope, it won't work with Windows 7 at all?" Would that be all right?

I didn't think so.

-Llama

[OOZ662]

I'd return it and never buy their hardware again, not jump on the "sue them!" bandwagon.

[Tigger29]

Class Action lawsuits are the death of the American legal system.  Yes, some are actually beneficial, but for every one CA lawsuit that is justifiable, there are probably one thousand that aren't.

The simple truth is that 99% of the people who bought those video cards probably could have CARED LESS about them being HDCP compliant, and never in their life would even consider installing a HDCP monitor to these cards.

Now that there is a CA lawsuit, these 99% of people (who have not been hurt physically, financially, or emotionally in any way) just want their 'free money' and otherwise would have never even thought about suing ATI.

The 1% who actually WOULD care about this being HDCP compliant, I'm sure are tech-savvy enough to have either 1> Make it work somehow, 2> Contact the retailer or ATI directly and reach some kind of conclusion (whether it be refund, exchange, or what-not), or 3> Switch to Nvidia and never purchase an ATI product again. 

Also I have a feeling that the 1% who were well off enough financially to actually want to spend extra money on HDCP compliant hardware were also well off enough financially to just forget about it, and buy another card.

Let the people who have actually suffered damages sue ATI directly, and let the free market REMEMBER about their little 'false advertisement' scheme, as this will hurt them much more than any lawsuit ever could.

The only people who come out ahead in CA lawsuits is the lawyers.  Company "A" gets sued by 1000 people for a million dollars.  The Lawyers keep 40% for themselves.  This means that the lawyers make $400,000 and each person gets $600.  I'm sorry, but if/when I'm even in a position to where I have been hurt so bad that I need to take it to court, it's going to be for a heck of a lot more than that!

[fuzeman]

Deadline approaching  August 10, 2009.

[guncrasher]

Class Action lawsuits are the death of the American legal system.  Yes, some are actually beneficial, but for every one CA lawsuit that is justifiable, there are probably one thousand that aren't.

The simple truth is that 99% of the people who bought those video cards probably could have CARED LESS about them being HDCP compliant, and never in their life would even consider installing a HDCP monitor to these cards.

Now that there is a CA lawsuit, these 99% of people (who have not been hurt physically, financially, or emotionally in any way) just want their 'free money' and otherwise would have never even thought about suing ATI.

The 1% who actually WOULD care about this being HDCP compliant, I'm sure are tech-savvy enough to have either 1> Make it work somehow, 2> Contact the retailer or ATI directly and reach some kind of conclusion (whether it be refund, exchange, or what-not), or 3> Switch to Nvidia and never purchase an ATI product again. 

Also I have a feeling that the 1% who were well off enough financially to actually want to spend extra money on HDCP compliant hardware were also well off enough financially to just forget about it, and buy another card.

Let the people who have actually suffered damages sue ATI directly, and let the free market REMEMBER about their little 'false advertisement' scheme, as this will hurt them much more than any lawsuit ever could.

The only people who come out ahead in CA lawsuits is the lawyers.  Company "A" gets sued by 1000 people for a million dollars.  The Lawyers keep 40% for themselves.  This means that the lawyers make $400,000 and each person gets $600.  I'm sorry, but if/when I'm even in a position to where I have been hurt so bad that I need to take it to court, it's going to be for a heck of a lot more than that!

If best buy was to overcharge by 100th of a cent on each transaction it wouldnt hurt you at all.  You wouldnt even noticed or care less or sue them individually after all I only shop at best buy 4 or 5 times a year.  but best buy could make millions and millions of dollars.   and they only way to stop them or any other company would be a class action suit.  True lot of class action suits are stupid and customers get nothing in return, think of the millie vanillie class action lawsuit, people got a $5 coupon i think which was pretty much useless to me or to lots of other people that wanted our money back.  but we havent had another millie vanillie crap since then.   there's no such thing as corporate honesty or trust, enron anybody? what if microsoft had promised that windows vista was better then windows xp,  after all how many people didnt have problems with vista and are happy with it but there's the other bunch that have lots of problems with it.  If you guys wanna come up with a better way go ahead, untill then pretty much all we have is class action lawsuits which are pretty much useless for customer in lots of instances but its better than nothing.

semp

[Spikes]

I have a 1650 but I don't see a point in this.

[Shamus]

I bought an x850 direct from ATI a few years ago, I didn't have to do a thing other than tell the court that I was not contesting the settlement, cashed my $130.00 check a month or two ago.

shamus

[BaldEagl]

I must always be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I've gotten notifications on several class action lawsuits for various reasons over the years including stock purchases, auto insurance, and subscriptions among others.  While most of these were'nt significant issues to me I've participated in almost all of them.  My damages are nomally minimal but to guncrasher's point it's the best system we have to keep these things in check.  It would be prohibitive for most single persons to sue on their own so without this system we'd be allowing these companies to walk off scott-free. 

Without the possibility of class action lawsuits corporate abuse of consumers would spiral out of control as most consumers wouldn't even know they were being been abused.

Speaking of Best Buy, to their credit, I purchased two digital converter boxes (I actually only needed one but what the heck... I have another 4th TV I'm not using currently) from them using the government coupons over the phone.  A couple of weeks later I got a check in the mail from Best Buy for around $5.00.  It had something to do with the tax calculations they used or something to that effect.  If they hadn't done this I'd have never thought twice about it.  Do you think maybe class action was in the back of their minds?