There is a thread on the new blizzard forums about an angry costumer trying to initiate a class action lawsuit in regard to Blizzard's World of Warcraft product. See the thread here.
Here's the important pieces to this article (in the event Blizzard decides to remove the thread).
I would like to get everyone’s interest in filing a class action lawsuit against Blizzard. If you read the technical support and customer service forums you will see that Blizzard has far too many issues that they chose to ignore. The majority of fixes on these forums are corrected by the clients of the software. If you have experienced any of the following after installing Blizzards software, you should respond to this thread.
Blocked access to cancel payment
Credit Card theft
Denial of refund
Denial of service
Denial of support
Denial of Service (DOS) attacks
Hardware damage
Identity theft
Legal threats
MBR corruption
Proprietary information theft
Unsolicited communications (spam)
Unauthorized payments
Virus installation
EDIT: The first time I tried to post this I was coincidentally denied access to the Blizzard forums:
“The site is down for maintenance.
We'll be back soon!”
http://us.battle.net/common/static/maintenance/maintenance.html- Haratik (Kil'jaeden Server)
12-04-2010 12:08 CDT
Here's the two Blizzard responses:
- Brianl (Support Forum Agent)I'm afraid that this just isn't the place for posts like this. Please make sure to peruse the Terms of Use and forum guidelines. prior to clicking 'Submit' in the future.
You generally don't go on the forum for some of those things. Here's a quick summary of what you listed:- datth (Support Forum Agent)
Blocked access to cancel payment - Website can be down for maintenance. You just call Billing and they'll take care of you, or wait till the website comes back up to cancel your account.
Credit Card theft - No.
Denial of refund - Call Billing. Don't post on the forums wanting refunds. We don't process refund requests on the forums
Denial of service - Maintenance is maintenance.
Denial of support - Contact us instead of hitting up the forums. Forums are user-to-user help.
Denial of Service (DOS) attacks - People tend to try that on us but not the other way around.
Hardware damage - No. Software does not damage hardware. Hardware has protection mechanisms on it to prevent such occurrences from happening.
Identity theft - No.
Legal threats - No.
MBR corruption - Game doesn't access or do anything with the MBR so no.
Proprietary information theft - Wut.
Unsolicited communications (spam) - You may want to check http://us.blizzard.com/support/article.xml?locale=en_US&articleId=25133 first. A lot of it isn't us. We sometimes send promotional offers and the Blizzard newsletter but they're not even monthly, and you can opt out of that.
Unauthorized payments - We see this when people steal your credit card information and sign up for stuff with it, usually a customer's child/stepchild/niece/nephew/etc. You can call in and we'll remove the card, and you can dispute the charges with your bank and so on.
Virus installation - No.
Blizzard has the right to edit, remove or otherwise do what they wish to any information on the Blizzard site. Therefore using a third-party means, such as Blogger, would be a preferred method to distributing information.
Now to the posters issues. A few were actually addressed by the moderators but I will post my responses:
Blocked access to cancel payment - Blizzard has three methods to cancel a payment: the website, their 24-hour Billing Department via phone, 24-hour Billing Department via email. If one or two of these services are down (website) or the queue is full (phone) the email method is still accessible. Requested changes to billing can and likely would be retroactive to the time frame the email was sent.
Credit Card theft - Blizzard does not steal credit card information. If a credit card was stolen physically, via computer virus, or other means outside the confines of the Blizzard coding or servers, then Blizzard is not liable for the damages as they have no control over these. If your credit card information was stolen from the Blizzard billing servers, then they would be liable, but they would have to (by federal law) inform you of the error. As full billing information can not be viewed from the account, account hijacks are not a method of theft.
Denial of Refund - (See Blocked access to cancel payment) Blizzard, as with all software companies, have a purchase clause that does not allow refunds for accessed Key codes. This means you cannot get a refund on opened products.
Denial of Service - When Blizzard must bring servers down for maintenance it's to provide the customer a better product (this is what your $15 a month pays for). I'm sure if Blizzard could keep the servers running during maintenance they would. It is technically unfeasible to have any network service up 100% of the time, most try for 90-95%.
Denial of Support - (See Blocked access to cancel payment)
Denial of Service (DoS) Attacks - Blizzard and Blizzard software only responds to communication requests. Therefore, if, in the unlikely event, Blizzard's software is filling your bandwidth, then getting more bandwidth or stop using the services should solve the issue. It is the customer's responsibility to ensure all minimum requirements for software is met or exceeded.
Hardware Damage - Hardware designers and OS designers have built in firmware to ensure poorly designed software cannot physically damage the hardware of a computer. Other possible reasons for hardware damage is excessive use, age and poor maintenance.
Identity Theft - Blizzard does not steal identities, and are not liable if your identity is stolen unless it was due to their hardware/software (see Credit Card Theft).
Legal Threats - (I'm ignoring the irony of this line-item) Blizzard or any other major corporation would vet any legal action through their legal department and correspondence would come from that. Furthermore, legal threats are not illegal.
MBR corruption - Most software cannot access a drive's Master Boot Record. If a MBR becomes corrupt the likely causes are damaged or corrupt clusters on the drive, the drive completely failed, a bad partitioning, or a virus that directly attacks the MBR. The software based attacks requires administrative rights.
Proprietary Information Theft - There are two possible avenues they may be referring, so I will address them seperately:
Blizzard Created - In game, website, etc. information must follow proper copyright laws and any violations would be between the property owner and Blizzard. "Fair Use" also applies and does not require authorization.
Customer Created - All items posted on the Blizzard website (by the Terms of Agreement) are property of Blizzard. Posting copyrighted material requires consent of the owner and a copy must be presented to Blizzard.
Unsolicited Communications - Blizzard provides newsletters that can be opted out of and their own ToA states that your information (including email) will not be provided to other entities.
Unauthorized Payments - Blizzard has an autopay feature if it's enabled by the user then the user has agreed to payments as defined on the page. Other forms of payment is covered in Blocked access to cancel payment and Credit Card Fraud.
Virus Installation - Blizzard does not create any software that can be deemed malicious code (ex. virus, worm, etc.). Should they choose to create one federal law will take over and a class action lawsuit will be derived from that (see Sony BFG Group's Rootkit). Viruses that ride Blizzard's software or otherwise uses Blizzard software installed by the user is not directly Blizzard's responsibility. In the interest of Cusomer support, Blizzard does: update their products to close vulnerabilities, provide steps to correct infections, and provide support to correct any discrepancies the virus may have caused to the account.
I'm not trying to be a big Blizzard supporter. This could have been any software company. The point is that foolish lawsuits that are (in the state of California's definition) "frivolous" are a waste to the company, the government and other customers.
If you believe you should sue a company follow this quick list of points before calling a lawyer:
- Contact the company and inform them of your complaint or issue. Most problems can be solved at this point.
- Read the documentation you agreed to (Terms of Service, ect). All the agreed upon rules and services are derived from these documents. Write your issue down and compare the two directly. If it isn't a rule or not an agreed service you have no backing for a lawsuit.
- If you are having an issue deciding you may be able to consult a lawyer, but this is the point where it may begin to cost you money.
No comments:
Post a Comment