>Class Members can receive between $4.00 and $7.00 cash award for each Subject Product
the Claimant purchased during the Class Period, subject to a maximum pro rata adjustment of 85%
of the Subject Products’ retail purchase price (i.e., 85% of $69.99 for the 2TB Subject Product, $84.99 for the 3TB Subject Product, $94.99 for the 4TB Subject Product, and $145.99 for the 6TB
Subject Product)
>The affected WD Red NAS hard drives have the following SKUs: WD20EFAX (2TB
capacity), WD30EFAX (3TB capacity), WD40EFAX (4TB capacity) and WD60EFAX (6TB
capacity)
> No proof of purchase is required to submit a claim, and Claimants may submit
claims for each Subject Product purchased.
still dont understand how that is supposed to work? submitting serial numbers?
Whats fascinating:
>3 The maximum pro rata upward adjustment amount was the subject of dispute between Plaintiffs
and Defendant. Plaintiffs advocated for a full refund, whereas Defendant insisted on a cap of $36
per 2TB and 3TB Hard Drives, and a cap of $63 for 4TB and 6TB Hard Drives. Pursuant to the
parties’ executed Class Action Settlement Term Sheet, this issue was decided by a third-party
neutral, Hon. Elizabeth Laporte (Ret.). Judge Laporte received written submissions from both
parties and issued a decision of 85% of the Subject Products’ retail purchase price as the maximum
pro rata upward adjustment. Judge Laporte’s decision is attached to the Kopel Declaration as
Exhibit 3.
So plaintiffs wanted full refund, WD proposed $36-$63, and Judge decided right in the middle will be $4-$7? Unsurprisingly there is no mention of $160 per drive, like there is no mention of admitting any guild, just WD agreeing to "correctly label its product for 4 years". Document calls this "significant injunctive relief" HAHA.
in other news WD seems to be in a settlement mood, here is another one for sex discrimination from January, with each class participant receiving ~2.5K while lawyers pocketed 2.5mil
Hardly feels like the court system works when it's impossible to actually recoup damages. Don't see how our justice and court systems can justify being the sole arbiters when the results so often suck ass.
Class-action lawsuits are designed to protect companies from dealing with class members individually deciding to sue them. So the method for getting a full refund is to be one of the few people who opt out of a settlement and decide to threaten to sue in small claims. It's cheaper to just give you the $160 you're demanding rather than send an employee to court to defend it, even if the company wins.
What damages, though? SMR drives are commonly used in enterprise storage applications.
WD should not have sold CMR and SMR drives under the same consumer label without distinction, but that's a marketing issue. The panic was instigated by self-appointed YouTube tech influencers who drummed up fear without bothering to show their followers how to make use of the drives.
The reality is that anyone can install ZFS and throw drives in a pool regardless of their characteristics and without adjusting a single sysctl tunable, then complain that they're not storage admins and shouldn't have been expected to manage their own systems. The moment they realized they didn't know as much as they thought they did, everything turned into hysterics.
I'd say $4-7/drive was totally worth paying to put this to rest.
So you are saying that you can tune SMR drives to behave like CMR with sysctl settings?
But QNAp / Synology won't do that? May be because WD was mixing SMR and CMR drives with the same product code, so consumers didn't know which drives they are getting in the first place and that's why the lawsuit.
One of the biggest issues here is that they flagrantly aimed to mislead the consumers.
They switched drives for an established line with dramatically different performance characteristics. They then proceeded to avoid declaring this, nor did they document this in a publicly available manner, requiring external independent investigation.
This is not for enterprise drives either, this is for consumer nas drives and they're marketed as such. It's pretty absurd to change an established line of products in such a manner that it no longer functions similarly in its original use case, while continuing to advertise it for that same case with absolutely 0 disclosure.
Hell, when questioned about it, they avoided providing information on which drives were smr. In what world is "buy it and find out the specs for yourself" a reasonable standard of documentation?
10 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 32.0 ms ] threadwow, a settlement where party admits guilt? seems rare
> The negotiated terms come to $2.7 million
ah, because it was cheap
>with complainants receiving $4 to $7 in cash for each drive purchased
wait, $4 to $7?
> with a maximum pro-rata adjustment of 85% of the retail price possible. That means the maximum damages per drive in the ~$160 range
so which is it? $4 to $7 or $160. I dont understand this at all.
> You won't need proof of purchase to make a claim.
how does that work? I claim to have purchased million of those drives pay me?
>The settlement value comes as the culmination of 10 weeks of negotiations and also includes lawyers' fees and other costs.
oh, so its $2.7 million minus lawyer fees ... This is the source of the news, https://lawstreetmedia.com/tech/consumers-present-2-7m-settl... Here is actual court document https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/California_Northern_Distri...
>Class Members can receive between $4.00 and $7.00 cash award for each Subject Product the Claimant purchased during the Class Period, subject to a maximum pro rata adjustment of 85% of the Subject Products’ retail purchase price (i.e., 85% of $69.99 for the 2TB Subject Product, $84.99 for the 3TB Subject Product, $94.99 for the 4TB Subject Product, and $145.99 for the 6TB Subject Product)
>The affected WD Red NAS hard drives have the following SKUs: WD20EFAX (2TB capacity), WD30EFAX (3TB capacity), WD40EFAX (4TB capacity) and WD60EFAX (6TB capacity)
> No proof of purchase is required to submit a claim, and Claimants may submit claims for each Subject Product purchased.
still dont understand how that is supposed to work? submitting serial numbers?
Whats fascinating:
>3 The maximum pro rata upward adjustment amount was the subject of dispute between Plaintiffs and Defendant. Plaintiffs advocated for a full refund, whereas Defendant insisted on a cap of $36 per 2TB and 3TB Hard Drives, and a cap of $63 for 4TB and 6TB Hard Drives. Pursuant to the parties’ executed Class Action Settlement Term Sheet, this issue was decided by a third-party neutral, Hon. Elizabeth Laporte (Ret.). Judge Laporte received written submissions from both parties and issued a decision of 85% of the Subject Products’ retail purchase price as the maximum pro rata upward adjustment. Judge Laporte’s decision is attached to the Kopel Declaration as Exhibit 3.
So plaintiffs wanted full refund, WD proposed $36-$63, and Judge decided right in the middle will be $4-$7? Unsurprisingly there is no mention of $160 per drive, like there is no mention of admitting any guild, just WD agreeing to "correctly label its product for 4 years". Document calls this "significant injunctive relief" HAHA.
in other news WD seems to be in a settlement mood, here is another one for sex discrimination from January, with each class participant receiving ~2.5K while lawyers pocketed 2.5mil
https://www.globenewswire.com/en/news-release/2021/01/08/215...
WD should not have sold CMR and SMR drives under the same consumer label without distinction, but that's a marketing issue. The panic was instigated by self-appointed YouTube tech influencers who drummed up fear without bothering to show their followers how to make use of the drives.
The reality is that anyone can install ZFS and throw drives in a pool regardless of their characteristics and without adjusting a single sysctl tunable, then complain that they're not storage admins and shouldn't have been expected to manage their own systems. The moment they realized they didn't know as much as they thought they did, everything turned into hysterics.
I'd say $4-7/drive was totally worth paying to put this to rest.
But QNAp / Synology won't do that? May be because WD was mixing SMR and CMR drives with the same product code, so consumers didn't know which drives they are getting in the first place and that's why the lawsuit.
They switched drives for an established line with dramatically different performance characteristics. They then proceeded to avoid declaring this, nor did they document this in a publicly available manner, requiring external independent investigation.
This is not for enterprise drives either, this is for consumer nas drives and they're marketed as such. It's pretty absurd to change an established line of products in such a manner that it no longer functions similarly in its original use case, while continuing to advertise it for that same case with absolutely 0 disclosure.
Hell, when questioned about it, they avoided providing information on which drives were smr. In what world is "buy it and find out the specs for yourself" a reasonable standard of documentation?