Apple sued for 30¢ $5m

Attorney Fees

Forget attorneys! They are the only ones who win in a class action suit. They get x-percent of the gazillion dollar settlement, and all the individuals get the rest divided by the people. If there is a real issue here, and the Apple lawyers think so, then they should settle out of court with these two individuals (NOT the attorneys) for maybe a couple hundred thousand AT BEST and consider the whole thing a misunderstanding.

Fuck a title this lady is stupid

"It is also to be assumed that it caught the attention of the Owens's attorneys, the law firm of Onder, Shelton, O'Leary & Peterson, LLC, who bill themselves as "St. Louis Personal Injury Attorneys" and who wrote into the complaint that judgment in their clients' favor should also recover "reasonable attorneys fees, interest and costs to the maximum extent allowed by law.""

I will be the first to say I am no Apple lover, far from it in fact. As much as I will say that it is kind of bogus that they didnt take this into account this is yet another reason I hate people. Some fat ass bimbo whos complaining about how much again? 5 KFC wings worth of 30 cent fees? And this PERSONAL INJURY LAWFIRM is going to take probably close to 2/3rds of the fee IF THEY WIN....

Seriously I think Apple shouldnt be sued for personal injury if they prevented this lady from having a heart attack before her time from eating fried chicken.....

OK maybe not true but damn I hate America sometimes.

RE: Fuck a title this lady is stupid

Why?

If the card said 99c a song without limitations then it should be 99c a song. She might be taking advantage of the way a compensation society works but it's hardly right to call her stupid. It's not clear whether she asked Apple to honour the price before getting lawyers involved and they refused, which she should have done first, but if she did and they didn't then the action is completely justified.

"Reasonable attorneys fees"...

... that's an oxymoron, if I ever saw one.

RE: Fuck a title this lady is stupid

"If the card said 99c a song without limitations then it should be 99c a song. She might be taking advantage of the way a compensation society works but it's hardly right to call her stupid. It's not clear whether she asked Apple to honour the price before getting lawyers involved and they refused, which she should have done first, but if she did and they didn't then the action is completely justified."

The real question is whether the marketing blurb on the back can be considered part of the "contract".

In my mind, the thing you get from a gift certificate is the amount of credit on the front, which these people got. They were promised a dollar amount rather than a number of songs or videos. The specified cost of items is moot, as in the real world this is always subject to change.

Go Lady!!

Anyone who screws over Apple is worth supporting cos they screw us over enough in crap products.

Talk about cheap

You'd think apple would just honour the difference.

Simple solution would be to just credit anyone with one of these cards with value*1.3 when they activate it. Leave everything else the same. Don't get sued.

Price hike

I'm all for bashing stupid lawsuits against the little man. But this one's against a giant company who massively over-estimate the value of their own products. If this case comes through, it's a small victory for everyone unfortunate enough to decide to purchase songs from iTunes.

And it's more than likely that the people who would receive the difference back would probably just plug that money back into iTunes anyway, meaning that the artists get a better cut.

Save the 'merkin bashing for the people that truly deserve it.

What crap

Basicly they are missing the point, they have chossen to download the DRM free version of the songs rather then the 99p songs.

The service offered a new feature with increased pricing, and they are saying they get to sue the company because they chose to use this new feature which wasnt taken in to account on the packaging.

Plus everybody know that a company markets their lowest price, not their highest. The cards make no mention of how many 1.29 songs can be purchused, but only the number of 99p songs.

I would say only in America, but that is no longer the case. A plague on the house of the ambulence chaser and those that in courage it.

RE: What crap

Apple introduced a mutli-tiered rpicing structure. Yet this was not made clear on the cards.

Surely the least they would have done would have been amended the wording to be similar to the video pricing

So instead of

Download [dollar amount] worth of entertainment to enjoy on your Mac or Windows PC. And, of course, your iPod. Songs are 99¢ and videos start at $1.99.

IT should have been amended to read

Download [dollar amount] worth of entertainment to enjoy on your Mac or Windows PC. And, of course, your iPod. Songs start at 99¢ and videos start at $1.99.

Just saying "Songs are 99¢" implies that all songs are 99¢ regardless of DRM option / quality.

Not Surprising

There must be hundreds of offers still doing the rounds that are out-dated. It's far easier and cheaper for companies to deal with the flak as it comes in than to trust an outlet to effect a complete recall of out of date information. The unfortunate thing is that we now live in a world where Average Jo(e) is being encouraged to screw their fellow man for a few bits of silver. The winner? Well, that'll be the lawyers. Distrust, scepticism, suspicion and ill feeling grows rife among the populace while the lawyers rub their greedy mitts at their guaranteed cashflow.

Hang 'em all, I say!

Paris, 'cos she's also been screwed...

FRIGGING TITLE!!! GAH!! And the title text box is longer than the allowed title size! STUPID!

The 99cents a song doesn't appear on all cards, and those that it does appear on have terms and conditions which further clafity the card as being worth "$15 of itunes credit" or similar. I would LOVE to see the purchasing history of this woman, and specifically if she has purchased any tunes at $1.29 BEFORE buying the gift cards. After all, why is she buying gift cards to use for herself? All very stupid really.

why...

"why is she buying gift cards to use for herself"

Huh? Maybe it was their anniversary and they bought each other a card as a present.

Or maybe she got sent a birthday cheque for $15, and the sender wrote "get yourself something from me with this" so she got herself a gift with the money.

or... and so on.

Another reason for giftcard use

Lack of a way to pay without one.

it;s NOT money lost...

When you get a $20 gift card from Walmart, you can use all $20 ONLY if you spend AT LEAST $20. If you spend $19.45, and never use the card again, you loose the $0.55 remaining. However, you could buy something else for $1.00, spend an additional $0.45 of your own coin, and get the remaining $0.55 off the card...

iTunes cards are not 20 songs, they're $20. 20 songs would have been $19.80. So there's 0.20. In theory, it sounds like they're forcing you to buy another track for $0.80 of your own coin to get the 0.20 back. However, even when there were .99 songs, there were 1.99 videos, 9.99 albums, various priced games, iPhone apps, and more.

The marketing blurb was not contracting the gift card to provide $0.99 cent songs, it was a statement of what the pricing was at that time. That price CHANGED after the printed date. possibly a big deal, and some might say "false advertising" however, use of the card requires acceptace of the iTunes user agreement, which includes verbage of prices are subject to change. The card, once activated at the store, but NOT activated in iTunes CAN be returned to Apple for a full refund.

They're not stealing Money. Once added to your iTunes account that money is permanant, and does not expire (unlike Visa gift cards....)

This is a completely frivilous case. It's the equivalent of claiming the record industry lost billions from money people were never going to spend in the first place... If you have $.20 left, it;s your choice to spend 79 or not. The value of the dollar is still the same. There weas NO correlation from the value of the card to a number of songs.

Now, if the card said "20 songs, 10 videos, or a combination of the 2 not to exceed $20" then that would be a different story if the price rose to $1.29... but that is NOT what it said, and this is complete BS.

Interesting legal question

Are gift cards or other materials that mention specific prices legally binding? In some cases, with the right (wrong?) wording, I think they could be, so this deserves some scrutiny. On the other hand, the class-action bit without any evidence will get thrown right out.

why...

@"why is she buying gift cards to use for herself"

I'd assume she has no credit card she is willing to provide to Apple, so she chose to buy the gift card in cash so that she could use iTunes.

I do that kind of thing all the time. I'll be damned if I'm going to give my credit card number out if I don't have to.

Sams Club

Happened to be in a Sams Club today - The ITunes cards were printed in - wait for it - 2007 - no ShLt. (Oh they did have the now famous wording.)

When did the sale take place?

Were the songs sold when the money was exchanged for the gift card, or when the specific songs were selected? Is it like whassisname's cat, both parties know that songs have been sold, but the sold/unsold state of individual songs remains unresolved?

Closest I could find to a "Paper Chase" icon.

Flow of events

If they contacted Apple, chances are they were told to stuff it. At which point (if the principle of the thing were important enough) your only recourse is through the legal system. 1/2 of $15 not being a whole lot, I'm sure the lawyers decided to try for the class action case and the associated "fees" therein.

Or maybe they are just a bunch of tossers going straight for the gold.

Either way Apple can settle this real quick with a $15 credit.