Here a good news story. For those of you who are sick and tired of Microsoft trying to force Windows 10 upon you, there’s news that a woman took the software giant to court. Here’s what happened next:
Teri Goldstein – who manages a travel agency in Sausalito, just north of San Francisco – told The Register she landed the compensation by taking Microsoft to a small claims court.
Rather than pursue a regular lawsuit, she chose the smaller court because it was better suited to sorting out consumer complaints. Crucially, it meant Microsoft couldn’t send one of its top-gun lawyers – or any lawyer in fact: small claims courts are informal and attorneys are generally not allowed. Instead, Redmond-based Microsoft had to send a consumer complaints rep to argue its case.
That put her on an equal footing with the multibillion-dollar software giant, giving her a fair fight.
Goldstein told the Marin County Superior Court in San Rafael that in August last year, “Windows 10 forced its upgrade on my business computer without my knowledge or permission.”
This update caused the Windows 7 Home Premium PC to crash and, even when it booted back up, made it “mostly unusable.” Goldstein had no idea what the problem was – she hadn’t even heard of Windows 10 at this point – so complained to her cable provider, thinking it was a problem with her internet connection. After Comcast told her the problem was entirely at her end, she contacted Microsoft.
After hours and hours of support desk calls, her computer remained in a barely usable state: three technicians uninstalled and reinstalled the operating system software to no avail. It was a complete waste of time.
“It took every minute of the day on the phone with Microsoft,” she told The Register.
The judge in court took her side and awarded her $10,000 USD. Likely about 6 seconds of profit for Microsoft. But that’s not the point. The point is that Microsoft was found liable and because of that, they can fully expect other Americans to do what this woman did seeing as she is encouraging users to “fight back”. America is a place where the lawsuit is king. Thus a bunch of these lawsuits might make the folks in Redmond do what they should have done, which is the right thing and give consumers the choice to use Windows 10 rather than forcing it upon the.
Sue away American people! Sue away!