Netflix settlement trouble
Remember that crappy Netflix class action settlement? The one where the lawyers got $2.5m and the customers got a free one month rental plan upgrade? And then if they forget to change it back they get billed for it? And a lot of people were pissed? Well, apparently somebody got the crazy idea that maybe it was a bad settlement.
The national public interest law firm Trial Lawyers for Public Justice has long been taking aim at what it considers unfair class-action settlements, filing objections to the settlements it believes offer lots of money to the plaintiff attorneys but very little–usually coupons with relatively small monetary value–to consumers. The group’s latest target is a proposed class-action settlement involving Netflix customers.
The proposed settlement, which TLPJ officials said is worth $4 million max, includes $2.5 million in attorney fees. But that’s just one of the problems with the proposed settlement, according to TLPJ, which filed a legal challenge . More troublesome, TLPJ says, is what consumers get: Current Netflix customers would get one-month upgrade to receive more DVDs, a value that ranges from $2 to $6, depending on what plan a customer is signed up for. But if consumers fail to cancel that upgraded service at the end of 30 days, they would then be billed for the more expensive service every month after that. Meanwhile, former Netflix customers, would get a month’s free service.
Light dawns on Marble Head. The real question: how much will TLPJ be paid for fixing this mess?
January 10th, 2006 at 5:58 pm
The other issue with the settlement was that when the huge surge of subscription upgrades hit, Netflix would be unprepared to handle the demand, and it would actually decrease the number of DVD’s people would receive.