A class action suit filed against Microsoft alleges that the Xbox Live operator engages in point fraud in reference to incomplete or partial downloads from the service.
Plaintiff Samuel Lassoff filed the complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on January 19, which also alleges breach of contract, negligence, unjust enrichment and unfair business practices. The complaint claims that Microsoft “received and retained money paid by the plaintiff in response to incomplete and or partial downloads of digital goods and services.”
Lassoff, upon reviewing invoices of his Microsoft Points purchases, found that he was a “victim of Microsoft Point fraud,” and attempted to contact Xbox Live customer support on the phone, with no response. He also spent time with his credit card company in an attempt to fix his account. In all, Lassoff estimated spending a total of “over 15 attorney hours over several days” to rectify his accounts.
The complaint warns that “unless restrained by this court,” Microsoft will “continue to engage in the unlawful, unfair, and/or fraudulent business acts or practices” alleged within the complaint.
The complaint seeks compensatory damages for plaintiff and other Class members, pre and post judgment interest, punitive and exemplary damages and a reimbursement of costs and expenses incurred by the action.
|Via InformationWeek|
Comments
Re: Philly Attorney Sues MS Over Xbox Live Points
The sense I'm getting is that he is suing over unused points. That in order to buy something worth 800 points on XBox LIVE, he has to say, purchased a block of 1000 points. Actual numbers are irrelevent (probably much much less than 15 hours of Attorney time ... which only attorneys actually place any real value upon).
If I pay for phone minutes or text messages on a per month basis, I usually pay for minutes I don't use. If I'm hungry for a bowl of breakfast cereal, I have to buy a whole box, not just the amount of a single bowl full (and the rest may get stale). With cable or satellite television, I typically have to pay for services I don't watch. The point being, MS (and other online game or media service providers) are selling points as a commodity. They don't go away (though they probably go away if you cancel your service).
If he cancels his account and does not get a refund for the value of points in the account, then maybe he has a suit ... and it would likely have to be a class action suit where only the attorneys involved would get any real value from the outcome ... hmmmmmm. My shenanagins sense is tingling.
--Verbinator
Re: Philly Attorney Sues MS Over Xbox Live Points
He has a point you can Re-Download DLC ass mucha s you want the only thing you can't is movies because they are rentals. But I've done it with music videos and DLC i guess no one told him how to do it.
Re: Philly Attorney Sues MS Over Xbox Live Points
Based on what I read, this isn't about the points system. He paid for something and for whaterver reason, the download was stopped. Maybe his internet went down or some kind of error occured. Anyway, according to the system he has to pay again to try another download. Other systems, the Wii for example, track your purchases. You can redownload any virtual console game you deleted from your system for free. Microsoft on the other hand does not do this. If you delete content from your hard drive you have to pay for it again if you want to redownload it. In this instance the whole piece of content never even made it to his hard drive. The download was started however, which is why the system counts it as a completed transaction. I think he has a valid case here. Microsoft does need to fix this problem.
Re: Philly Attorney Sues MS Over Xbox Live Points
Yeah as soon as your purchase is completed, the item is marked as owned in your user profile so it all happens before the download. There really isn't much chance of that system messing up and double charging and in the one instance where I have heard about it, MS refunded the points (took them a week or 2 but they did it)
Re: Philly Attorney Sues MS Over Xbox Live Points
Sorry, but you're misinformed. Microsoft does track your purchases, and you can redownload them for free. When dealing with a bug on Braid, I downloaded the game at least half a dozen times, but I only paid for it once.
Re: Philly Attorney Sues MS Over Xbox Live Points
There's one - and only one - aspect of Xbox Live (not sure how this factors in to PSN or Nintendo WFC) that MS need to be hauled over the coals for, and that's the fact that it's impossible to change the nationality of an Xbox Live account under any circumstances. I lost my first XBL account (and all the premium content it owned) when I moved from the UK to Ireland, and will lose it all again when I move back eventually.
Re: Philly Attorney Sues MS Over Xbox Live Points
The only aspect that needs to be overhauled is that nationality matters. My German account can't access the Gears of War 2 and Army of Two DLCs, because those games were never released in Germany. As far as Xbox Live is concerned, I'm British now.
Also, could you elaborate, how you "lose" your accounts? Because, as I said, as far as Xbox Live is concerned, a lot of gamers from Germany are "British" without a problem.
Re: Philly Attorney Sues MS Over Xbox Live Points
With all the fuss about how this point to game ratio is a scam, it makes me wonder why, in all this time, nobody has sued hot dog bun makers for the same thing.
-Joseph-
www.working-as-designed.blogspot.com
Re: Philly Attorney Sues MS Over Xbox Live Points
If the idiot wants to burn off the extra points he can head to the avatar market.
Re: Philly Attorney Sues MS Over Xbox Live Points
on one hand, i have 100 points this would probably be perfect for, on the other...i think the gamer and common sense part of my brain would intentially shut off my breathing for supporting paying to dress up a stupid little avatar.
Re: Philly Attorney Sues MS Over Xbox Live Points
I don't see the issue here- as dumb as it is, there is no fraud about how the points work: you buy them in "packs" or "blocks". There isn't anything I have ever seen that makes it look like you can buy 1 point at a time or any other denominations. How exactly was this person fooled? Never have I seen anywhere where Microsoft gives the impression you can buy points any way other than the package system.
It's similar to buying batteries- you might only want a single AA battery, but you need to buy a pack of 2-4 minimum. Would that warrant a lawsuit against Energizer or Duracell?
Re: Philly Attorney Sues MS Over Xbox Live Points
Why do hot dogs come in packs of 10 but buns in packs of 8? I'm going to sue Oscar Mayer and the bun manufacturers!
Re: Philly Attorney Sues MS Over Xbox Live Points
Sadly, with the way our nation seems to work sometimes, many people out there would say yes.
We are a nation where EVERYONE and EVERYTHING must conform to ME. As such, we stop thinking about the logic of things if they don't work EXACTLY as I want them to right then.
Thus when we are bit in the ass by our not thinking, we feel we have the right to sue because WE chose not to use our brain.
Re: Philly Attorney Sues MS Over Xbox Live Points
When you buy something on Playstation Online, or say a wiiware titel or something, once you own the title, you can download and redownload it at your leisure.
is this not the case with XBL?
Re: Philly Attorney Sues MS Over Xbox Live Points
Xbox Live, once your Xbox dies for example and there is a very good chance of that happening most of the DLC has DRM included in it which means even if you re-download the content in most cases you would have to be logged on to use said Content.
If anything the DRM on the 360 sucks and if it’s preorder content, you’re out of luck delete it and it’s gone forever.
Re: Philly Attorney Sues MS Over Xbox Live Points
Actually, I had an XBox die and it's very easy to plug in a new 360, recover your gamer tag, and redownload all of your purchases. In fact, the new XBox updated my profile for me so everything on my hard drive was usable online. (We shouldn't let the facts get in the way of our Microsoft hate, though.)
If this lawyer is having problems downloading stuff, I'd suggest his internet connection sucks, or he's incompetent.
As far as purchasing points goes, nobody forced him to buy stuff online, everything is spelled out in the user agreement, and nobody forced him to waste "15 lawyer hours" (apparently he wants to charge his credit card company and Microsoft $500 per hour since he's a lawyer) to try to recover the $3 extra he had to purchase in MS points.
Re: Philly Attorney Sues MS Over Xbox Live Points
You can redownload game you have previously bought on all 3 services.
That is not what the suit is about.The suit is about the fact that you cannot just buy the point you need.
Lets say you want to buy an XBLIG for 80 points. Unfortunately, the lowest amount of points you can buy from Microsoft is 1000 points. (numbers may not be accurate) so you now have 920 points that you were forced to buy but can't spend because there is nothing that can be bought for 920 and nothing you want to buy to use more of the points.
Sure you could add on several other games and DLC to use up all those points but all you wanted was a single 80 point game. So regardless of whether you use all the points or not at that time, Microsft forced you to spend $13 (or however much 1000 points cost) to get a $1 game.
E. Zachary Knight
Oklahoma City Chapter of the ECA
http://www.theeca.com/chapters_oklahoma
E. Zachary Knight
Divine Knight Gaming
Random Tower: Game News and Commentary
Re: Philly Attorney Sues MS Over Xbox Live Points
I am not even sure that is what the suit is about.
The linked article says something about purchaces that he was charged for but unable to download, but I am not sure what that really means in this context. Initially it sounds like payment was recieved for a service that was not provided, or at minimal goods were not delivered.
Re: Philly Attorney Sues MS Over Xbox Live Points
The lowest you can get is actually 500 ms points.
Also the PSN store seems to have a minimum amount you can buy as well, I went to buy one of the digital comics when they first came out and to buy a single cheap comic, I had to put $10 in my wallet. I ended up spending about $30 overall but I COULD have had leftovers in much the same way I currently have 80 mspoints sitting idle
It sounds like this guy is a whiny twit. It's a virtual currency system for a marketplace that is 100% optional. Its pretty clearly stated that those point blocks are the products for sale, that the purchase is non-refundable and by buying them, he's agreed to those terms. I'm not sure what more he can say to convice someone that he's not just complaining for the sake of it. If he gets a $20 gift voucher from amazon and buys a DVD priced at $17.95, would he sue for the remaining $2.05?
Re: Philly Attorney Sues MS Over Xbox Live Points
The problem with the gift card analogy is that you have the option of using other forms of currency to pay to complete the balance of your purchase. ie. a credit card or a debit card. With MS points all you have is using the MS points.
Personally I hate the points system. I currently have space bucks that I paid for that I can't use because nothing in the store is worth that amount. So there's about $3 of mine (that I would admitedly waste anyways) sitting in Microsoft's pocket that I can't do anything about. At least if it were in my pocket I could buy a cup of coffee. Now that it's with Microsoft it's just sitting there.
Is it annoying? Hell yes. Is it something to sue over? Hell no. I'll buy more points when something else comes out and the cycle will continue.
Re: Philly Attorney Sues MS Over Xbox Live Points
How do you know this EZK? Where did you get more information about the lawsuit? Even the link only says something about "not being able to download due to a bawky download system"
The information at the bottom of that article is unrelated to the lawsuit.
Re: Philly Attorney Sues MS Over Xbox Live Points
true. I guess I was taking the Kotaku interpretation of the suit at face value without fully reading the article.
E. Zachary Knight
Oklahoma City Chapter of the ECA
http://www.theeca.com/chapters_oklahoma
E. Zachary Knight
Divine Knight Gaming
Random Tower: Game News and Commentary
Re: Philly Attorney Sues MS Over Xbox Live Points
darn, i was hoping you did have more info.
Re: Philly Attorney Sues MS Over Xbox Live Points
Well, Kotaku was speculating that the lawsuit could incorporate the point purchase problem into the greater suit of poor infrastructure.
Both are annoying and should be remedied.
E. Zachary Knight
Oklahoma City Chapter of the ECA
http://www.theeca.com/chapters_oklahoma
E. Zachary Knight
Divine Knight Gaming
Random Tower: Game News and Commentary
Re: Philly Attorney Sues MS Over Xbox Live Points
All three services do pretty much the same thing. Nintendo points must be bought in increments of 1000; Sony allows you to pay the exact amount as long as it's $4.99 (and as long as your wallet is empty at the time).
Needless to say, I don't buy downloadable content.
Andrew Eisen
Re: Philly Attorney Sues MS Over Xbox Live Points
I'm pretty sure you can buy Nintendo Points in 200 point increments, and Sony doesn't have any requirement on pricing for full pay. I have bought 1.99 items, and 19.99 items and only payed what was needed, even with money on my wallet.
Personally I think this lawsuit is rediculous. While I understand not wanting to buy more MS Points than you need for just one simple item, you have to realize that the ENTIRE system belongs to MS and they are free to do with it as they see fit. They choose to sell MS Points, and people submit PDLC for people to download at certain prices. These don't match up as a part of a smart business plan on MS's part.
Besides, there have been many times where I end up with 0 points in my account on Xbox due to the math behind their points and prices. Things usually cost 80 - 120 - 200 - 400 - 800 - 1600 and you buy in groups of 500 - 1000 - ? - ? (I don't remember the last ones), but mathmatically, there is almost always a way to use all your points without being stuck below the lowest possibly value (not saying impossible, but usually safe).
Well, I did just remember video dlc can go 160 which destroys the math, but like I said, not perfect, but all on MS's own system, so they are legally free to do as they wish.
Re: Philly Attorney Sues MS Over Xbox Live Points
I'm pretty sure you can buy Nintendo Points in 200 point increments
You can't buy them, but you can swap star points for 200 wii points on the Nintendo website.
Re: Philly Attorney Sues MS Over Xbox Live Points
"I'm pretty sure you can buy Nintendo Points in 200 point increments..."
Nope. It's blocks of 1000. Of course, I haven't checked in a long time; maybe it's changed and I just hadn't heard. I'll give it a look see when I get home.
Far as Sony goes, I don't have the PS3 so I'm going off what a friend of mine says. I know you can purchase $.49 stuff but from what I understand, you have to have money in your wallet first.
Andrew Eisen
Re: Philly Attorney Sues MS Over Xbox Live Points
yep, 1000 is the minimum online. although you can also buy them in blocks of 2000 (also as a scrath-off card), 3000, and 5000 if you wish. coincidentally enough, all increments except 2000 are available in Japan as scratch-off cards.
岩「…Where do masochists go when they die?」