The $54 Million Laptop

[Hazirak]

Think your laptop is pricey? One woman is suing Best Buy for $54 million over hers, and even started a blog over it to boot.

Campbell, who could not be reached Tuesday, filed a negligence lawsuit suit against the company in Washington Superior Court on Nov. 16, seeking fair compensation for replacement of the $1,100 computer and extended warranty, plus expenses related to identity theft protection.

Best Buy spokeswoman Nissa French said in an e-mail that Campbell "was offered and collected $1,110.35" as well as "a $500 gift card for her inconvenience."

Anyone keeping track of economic trends will notice that this case makes laptops roughly equal in value to a pair of pants.

I think most of us acknowledge that $54 million is just a little unreasonable (even she admits the enormous figure was only to "attract attention to her case"), but is she entitled to -any- kind of extra money, even if it is simply in the form of a settlement? Should Best Buy have said something sooner instead of trying to cover its tracks? Or is this woman just another crazy old loony we've all grown (somewhat) accustomed to living with in our daily lives?

 

[Smith6612]

Geez, people sue for the craziest things. It's also another reason why I mainly have desktops. If something goes wrong or dies with the software or hardware, I can fix it on my own in a few hours, unless hardware died, guaranteed.

 

[Livewire]

Irony is her putting a $54mil tag on it will attract attention.

The problem is it's also attracting an insane amount of "are you f***ing nuts" attention which can eventually result in her getting her case thrown out on the grounds of stupidity.

 

[oiwio]

I really hate people like this that sue even though what they wanted came just a little bit later than expected.

What an idiot

 

[Sohail]

That's crazy :O:O. I heard someone in McDonald spilt coffee on her self on purpose and sued McDonalds. Now whenever you buy a coffee from there it says be careful - hot on the cups...!!

 

[sunils]

This is crazy, sueing millions for a laptops.

 

[Hazirak]

I really hate people like this that sue even though what they wanted came just a little bit later than expected.

What an idiot

Please do us a favor and read the article. She waited three moths for what she wanted (her laptop to be fixed), but never got it back. It took three months for them to say "We lost it, tough luck."

I believe this pretty much invalidates your statement. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[Foxhound]

She has a right to sue because god knows what was on her laptop. Maybe important information was on it and hell if my credit card number was on it I'd sue for possible identity theft. Did you know that at places like geek squad people download what you have on your pc or even browse through it? It's why I do my own repairs. The point of the matter is the laptop should not have been lost because it's a fricken laptop not a remote control. It would be like losing a mini television how do you lose a televesion? The reason ridiculous lawsuits have to occur is because if you get no media coverage the company won't take you seriously.

 

[Twinkie]

I think that she has no right to sue that much for a laptop no matter how much information was on it. She should only sue for the value of the laptop, and maybe a little more for the trouble. Maybe she is doing this as a publicity stunt to get herself in the news, who knows.

 

[jaredlp]

I'm totally agree with Twinkie. It seems like a publicity stunt xD

 

[Hazirak]

She said herself she doesn't expect to get the full $54 million, but simply wanted to call attention to BestBuy's shoddy customer service practices.

It's worth nothing that not only did they pull out every excuse in the book down to fabricating entries in their system to make it look like her laptop had been checked in for repairs, but they did so in direct violation of a Washington DC law that says they must tell their customers when their property is lost or stolen from their store, as there may be sensitive data on the hard drive that they do not know about. For example, this particular woman had her tax returns on her laptop, which opens up the very real possibility of identity theft.

 

[oiwio]

wouldnt it be her wasting money then since she would have to pay for a lawyer?

 

[Loneua Technologies]

She is nuts,

There is no way she is going to win against a huge company like Best Buy.

 

[Hazirak]

wouldnt it be her wasting money then since she would have to pay for a lawyer?

In her blog, she states she tried to come to an agreement a couple times, and offered to settle after she already filed suit - it seems Best Buy would rather fight her with their lawyers than settle the dispute outside court, but because of this the damage to their reputation has already been done.

She also claims that the $1,100 credit to her credit card account and $500 gift card were sent without her knowledge or consent before she filed - they just did it.

 

[rlodge]

In case you didn't read, she was offered and accepted over $1100 for the laptop and a $500 gift card. The suit amount was meant to bring it into the news to show that Geek Squad / Best Buy screwed up.

I like the idea. Not the amount but the publicity. No one is holding these foul ups (not just Best Buy and Geek Squad but all companies) responsible for losing personal data that they are in charge of. Like the knob heads that take laptops full of customers' info to lunch, the data is unencrypted and the laptop gets stolen. I may have missed it but I don't think I've ever seen anyone fined heavily for their lax security.

I know I was ticked when one of my laptops had a hard drive going (keyword "going", meaning it could still be accessed to some extent) bad. The company replaced the hard drive with a new one (shipped to me to install) promptly but demanded the old drive back "intact". I told them I had personal data on the drive and asked if I could physically destroy the drive and return it to them. They told me if I did that I would pay for the replacement drive. Sucks being them, They would need to glue the discs together again to retrieve the data. I made one disc into many small pieces and was never charged for the new drive.

 

[Hazirak]

In case you didn't read, she was offered and accepted over $1100 for the laptop and a $500 gift card. The suit amount was meant to bring it into the news to show that Geek Squad / Best Buy screwed up.

I wasn't saying whether she did or not, I'm simply stating that in her blog, she claims she never knew about either the $1,100 or $500 gift card until the transfers were completed (the former of which I personally have my doubts about).

I know I was ticked when one of my laptops had a hard drive going (keyword "going", meaning it could still be accessed to some extent) bad. The company replaced the hard drive with a new one (shipped to me to install) promptly but demanded the old drive back "intact". I told them I had personal data on the drive and asked if I could physically destroy the drive and return it to them. They told me if I did that I would pay for the replacement drive. Sucks being them, They would need to glue the discs together again to retrieve the data. I made one disc into many small pieces and was never charged for the new drive.

Next time something like that happens, pick up a good, strong magnet and run it over the drive. It'll still be intact, but the data will be effectively corrupted, at the least. If I'm not mistaken, they actually make magnets used for the sole purpose of wiping out hard drives.

 

[rlodge]

I wasn't saying whether she did or not, I'm simply stating that in her blog, she claims she never knew about either the $1,100 or $500 gift card until the transfers were completed (the former of which I personally have my doubts about).

I may have misread whether she took / got the money and gift certificate. I was not trying to single out or attack anyone's statement and I see that my initial post was poorly worded. Also, I guess I should have read the blog, too.

My main point is that these companies need to be held accountable for their actions. ID theft in this country (US) and most likely many others is costing $Millions ($Billions?) annually and the people suffering are not the ones screwing up. The ones that screwed up only have to deal with some bad publicity.

I think when something like this happens, the company that screwed up needs to pay a predetermined amount ($1,000,000?) per person to a sort of slush fund. Then if someone can show that their data was lost by Company X (through a law that requires companies to fully disclose all lost data) and shortly after this their ID was stolen, they can use the slush fund to pay any fees related to the theft. Any money that is not used after a reasonable period (i.e. 1-2 years) is repayed to the company. And no this doesn't include any interest they may have accrued. This is to be a punishment / deterrent against companies putting our identities at risk.

Also, the company I give my info to doesn't have the ability to pawn the responsibility off to a courier company who then pawns the responsibility off to a contracted person. I gave my info to company X at their request and they are solely responsible for the security of that data. If they don't like that, don't ask for the data.

It's obvious that I'm not a lawyer and the above scenario may be shot full of holes but making the company that was entrusted with your private data responsible for safeguarding that data is the goal.

Next time something like that happens, pick up a good, strong magnet and run it over the drive. It'll still be intact, but the data will be effectively corrupted, at the least. If I'm not mistaken, they actually make magnets used for the sole purpose of wiping out hard drives.

I thought about that but I was mad that they would even suggest that I send the drive intact even after I told them I had no way to remove all my private data from it.

 

[Hazirak]

It's not a bad idea in theory, but in this case, I doubt a 'shush fund' would be necessary - there is a law where this incident occurred that Best Buy knowingly and willingly ignored that says if they lose a customer's computer for whatever reason, they have to tell, no if's, and's, or but's, and identity theft is exactly the reason why.

If this woman has any chance in hell of getting anything out of this suit, that will be why (and in fact, it pretty much is the backbone of her case).

 

[TheOutfit]

This just goes to show we've officially gone sue-happy
I mean, cmon she was getting $500 in store credit for inconvience.....
All she wanted was attention &money.
This is one of the stupidist things ive seen

 

[rlodge]

This just goes to show we've officially gone sue-happy
I mean, cmon she was getting $500 in store credit for inconvience.....
All she wanted was attention &money.
This is one of the stupidist things ive seen

We'll see how far $500 goes for the inconvenience of having her identity stolen. (If it ever comes to that.)