Because it will only cost them “billions” if someone can come forward to the court and claim “billions” in damages. Good luck with that, when your product is a USB drive with flashy labeling.
Will you be the first to take them to court, to recover the damages from you being deceived for this dopey drive? The judge may actually award you double damages and order them to pay you $200!!!
In the EU most (all?) members have a state-run consumer watchdog organization that can and does escalate measures depending on how big the problem is and how many people are reporting it.
But something like this wouldn’t typically make it to the watchdog because there’s also consumer law in place to allow people to return faulty/unfit devices. So bad products like these typically get absorbed by merchants and importers, who would find themselves unable to shift that particular product and turn it back to Lenovo. Eventually Lenovo can’t find anybody willing to buy the product and have to take the hi[n]t.
The beauty of this system is that it turns the problem back to the commercial side. It takes the regular people (buyers) out of the problem and makes merchants/importers/manufacturers figure it out among themselves. The idea being that “market forces” are real and they work but they shouldn’t be inflicted on unsuspecting customers.
It still affects the buyers, though. If I get hacked because I bought crappy “encrypting” hardware, I may not even care about getting my 20 bucks back because I just lost thousands and my life is ruined.
It’s a beautiful and appealing idea that market forces will regulate everything if you just let things go. But we’ve tried that for long enough now to see that the real world is too complex and the consequences of bad regulation are too serious.
Smaller classes mean more money for those actually affected. The millions in settlements getting split between millions of people isn’t much, but across just a hundred thousand… Some actual restitution.
Because it will only cost them “billions” if someone can come forward to the court and claim “billions” in damages. Good luck with that, when your product is a USB drive with flashy labeling.
Will you be the first to take them to court, to recover the damages from you being deceived for this dopey drive? The judge may actually award you double damages and order them to pay you $200!!!
lololololololololololol!!!
In the EU most (all?) members have a state-run consumer watchdog organization that can and does escalate measures depending on how big the problem is and how many people are reporting it.
But something like this wouldn’t typically make it to the watchdog because there’s also consumer law in place to allow people to return faulty/unfit devices. So bad products like these typically get absorbed by merchants and importers, who would find themselves unable to shift that particular product and turn it back to Lenovo. Eventually Lenovo can’t find anybody willing to buy the product and have to take the hi[n]t.
The beauty of this system is that it turns the problem back to the commercial side. It takes the regular people (buyers) out of the problem and makes merchants/importers/manufacturers figure it out among themselves. The idea being that “market forces” are real and they work but they shouldn’t be inflicted on unsuspecting customers.
It still affects the buyers, though. If I get hacked because I bought crappy “encrypting” hardware, I may not even care about getting my 20 bucks back because I just lost thousands and my life is ruined.
It’s a beautiful and appealing idea that market forces will regulate everything if you just let things go. But we’ve tried that for long enough now to see that the real world is too complex and the consequences of bad regulation are too serious.
That’s what class actions are for…
I got a grand from a class action lawsuit, couldn’t believe it
Smaller classes mean more money for those actually affected. The millions in settlements getting split between millions of people isn’t much, but across just a hundred thousand… Some actual restitution.
I’ve had a couple show up in my mailboxes over the years, usually in the form of checks for less than a dollar.
I lost all my bitcoin in a tragic USB accident.