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from the who-knew-Office-Depot-was-still-around? dept.
Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984
Office Depot and a partner company tricked customers into buying unneeded tech support services by offering PC scans that gave fake results, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Consumers paid up to $300 each for unnecessary services.
The FTC yesterday announced that Office Depot and its software supplier, Support.com, have agreed to pay a total of $35 million in settlements with the agency. Office Depot agreed to pay $25 million while Support.com will pay the other $10 million. The FTC said it intends to use the money to provide refunds to wronged consumers.
Between 2009 and 2016, Office Depot and OfficeMax offered computer scans inside their stores using a "PC Health Check" software application created and licensed by Support.com.
"Defendants bilked unsuspecting consumers out of tens of millions of dollars from their use of the PC Health Check program to sell costly diagnostic and repair services," the FTC alleged in a complaint that accuses both companies of violating the FTC Act's prohibition against deceptive practices. As part of the settlements, neither company admitted or denied the FTC's allegations.
The FTC filed its complaint against the companies in US District Court for the Southern District of Florida, while at the same time unveiling the settlements with each company.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bob_super on Friday March 29 2019, @05:27PM (3 children)
Who's going to jail for this organized fraud ?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 29 2019, @05:56PM (1 child)
jail is only for the little people
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 29 2019, @06:14PM
mhmm. jail is for housing the excess labor pool, not the jerb creators
those proles should be happy! we're spending $100,000 per year on each of those ungrateful slobs! you think starving kids in china get to eat nutriloaf?!
(Score: 3, Informative) by Revek on Friday March 29 2019, @11:17PM
They made it hard to remove their crap software also. I often had to boot a rescue disk and delete the files. They weren't the only ones though. All of them used their crap software for fund raising, including Symantec. I walked into a insurance office one day to pay a bill and one of their 'techs' was attempting to scam them into paying four hundred dollars a PC to 'clean' the machines. He was on the machine remotely and had re sorted the event viewer by critical warnings so the customer saw only red. They couldn't download the client to reinstall. It was timing out. I remoted into a machine at my office and the link symantec gave started downloading immediately. I can only infer from this that symantec was blocking their machines so they had trouble installing the new client. They knew I was tech so they asked me what to do I told them we need to unplug the cable modem and remove their remote control software. I enjoyed giving the symantec guy crap on the phone while I was removing their garbage. I really made fun of him until he hung up. We replaced their anti virus and moved on. Scams like this are still ongoing. Most are from overseas scam farms who we let have US numbers. They are fun to mess with I've often gave them remote access to a VPS install. The beauty of it is I get to watch them and learn how they operate. I don't clean machines daily anymore but I'm sure the scams go on.
This page was generated by a Swarm of Roaming Elephants
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 29 2019, @05:31PM (4 children)
I'd certainly expect them to inflate minor concerns, but not outright fabricate them.
I suppose blowing minor stuff out of proportion requires some degree of competence, but damn, is training people to do that so hard?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Booga1 on Friday March 29 2019, @05:47PM (2 children)
It goes far beyond employee training. The software was such an obvious scam that some employees refused to participate in such a ridiculous fraud.
On top of that, the stores even warned employees to NOT re-scan the computer after everything was "fixed" because they knew it would just find "new" problems.
Even better was the sting operation from the same news station that gave them brand new in-the-box computers that had never been connected to the internet. The software still found "problems" that needed "repair." They demonstrated some of the software and it had some vague questions like, "do you receive pop up windows that block your web browsing?" and "does your computer seem slower lately?" If ANY checkbox was selected, the software would report "signs of malware infection" and would recommend "repairs" that were pretty pricey($189-$300).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Friday March 29 2019, @06:20PM (1 child)
That isn't so far-fetched. I'll recount my wife's first purchase of a computer. One of the original Athlon, offered by Compaq, for an attractive price at the time. She got it delivered, opened it up, and set it up. It had a few odd icons, for pre-installed stuff. One of those icons was a black raven, or crow, that helped her to connect to some gaming platform on the web. "Gaming platform" in this case meant all the cool little old-lady games, like a hundred versions of solitaire, some eye-candy crap similar to Angry Birds (Angry Birds didn't exist at the time, but rather similar stuff did.) I think there was a Tetris-like - all sorts of stuff.
But, the computer ran like crap. I've mentioned a couple of times that at the same time, I built a Super Socket Six machine, with a 450mhz mobile, and one full gig of PC 150 memory. My 450 (overclocked slightly - stable at about 480 mhz) ran Windows XP better and more smoothly than her 1 ghz Athlon. More, her Athlon got slower and slower. When she FINALLY permitted me to touch her new shiny, I quickly learned that the little black raven was the (primary) source of her problems. Some sources flat out stated that the program was in and of itself malware. Other sources had more benign sounding terms for it, but all agreed it was a true resource hog. The various crap that the raven's game platform fed to your machine was often pure malware.
So, yeah, if the PC builder is willing to whore itself to the malware distributors, you'll have malware on a brand new machine that has never connected to the internet.
Oh - even worse, if you uninstalled the game thing, Windows would just restore it automagically. I ended up nuking from orbit, and installing a pirated version of XP for her.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 29 2019, @06:41PM
Here is This Morning's coverage of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cEfYibkHjM [youtube.com]
The computers were clean, according to IO Active, which is one of the bigger corporate security firms, and they said all of the machines were clean. Well, except for the one right out of the box from another Office Depot, which then raises the issue of why OD is either faking issues not there or recklessly selling computers with issues.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 29 2019, @08:11PM
Let's see ... "You get $25 for every one of these special service contracts. Any questions?"
Looks like it's easy to train people.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Booga1 on Friday March 29 2019, @05:38PM (1 child)
I can just hear it now:
"Oh no!" exclaimed the company executive. "We'll have to give back a lot of money! At least we made a huge profit anyway."
Most of these kinds settlements don't even give back all the money to the customers that got soaked for the cash. I couldn't find any kind of real total other than "tens of millions" that they raked in from the scheme, so it certainly looks like they don't want to admit how much they really made.
(Score: 4, Funny) by krishnoid on Friday March 29 2019, @07:39PM
No, no, they don't get to just hand the money back. Instead:
Since they might become suicide risks pretty shortly, lower-level co-conspirators get to take shifts to be on suicide-watch for them. Conjugal and family visits are allowed, as long as the visitors bring in infected PCs.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 29 2019, @05:42PM (5 children)
Make the fines hurt instead of being a drop in the bucket that is their balance sheet:
1. Forfeit all revenue earned from the scam, this is used to pay restitution
2. A fine of all of last year's profit or 10 percent of revenue, whichever is larger
3. A list of names from the C-suite that are responsible (whether in practice or through the reporting hierarchy, it is thswe people's job to know what is going on and therefore either they know and are responsible or they don't and they are incompetent) and will be fired and sent to jail for this scam
4. 5 years (at minimum) of supervision to prevent these shenanigans in the future
5. You are not allowed to deduct any of this from your taxes
If these companies really want to be called job creators, let's see them project these jobs with ethical behavior
Fuck you, fuck you with a big, rubber dick... in the asshole!
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday March 29 2019, @06:05PM (2 children)
Two points:
1. Why rubber, rather than glass shards ?
2. Are you expecting effective enforcement of corporate punishment from this administration ?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Friday March 29 2019, @06:26PM (1 child)
2. seems a joke question, in view of the fact that no previous administration has effectively enforced laws, rules, or regulations against corporation. At best, we've seen semi-effective hodge-podge enforcement of a few high profile issues. Clinton admin started monopoly enforcement against Microsoft, but failed to move quickly, or effectively, then that law suit was dropped by his replacement. No - effective enforcement has always been a joke.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 29 2019, @07:18PM
You need to double check your timeline. The suit was filed on May 18, 1998 and the trial began on October 19, 1998. Then, January 13, 1999: The defense phase of the trial begins; followed by the second round of factual trial on redirect on June 1, 1999.
On November 5, 1999, Judge Jackson issues his initial findings of fact, which gives each side one more go at trial. But the official findings weren't issued until April 3, two days after settlement talks collapse. That is when the judge gives his official ruling. Microsoft appealed the same day, but was denied their interlocutory appeal all the way up to SCOTUS.
Judge Jackson orders the break up of Microsoft into two companies on June 7, 2000, which is obviously appealed. The court heard the appeal on February 27, 2001. This sent the case back down to the trial court. This would mean that there would probably be another year or two of trial by a new judge, plus additional discovery.
On November 1, 2002, Judge Kollar-Kotelly released a judgment accepting most of the proposed settlement. Because different majorities of plaintiffs objected to different parts of the settlement, there was a mess of appeals and cross-appeals. On June 30, 2004, the U.S. Appeals Court unanimously approved the settlement with the Justice Department, which finally ended the monopoly suit.
If you know anything about the law, that timeline is actually relatively fast for a case with as many different parties and issues as this. In addition, you'll also note that presidents from both sides of the aisle were involved for years. Even if Bush had kept trying to push the issue, given everything involved the trial, appeals, and everything may have lasted until Obama was president. The only real problem was the pressure from Congress and state elected officials to drop the suit, as Microsoft increased their lobbying efforts.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Friday March 29 2019, @06:51PM (1 child)
I wonder if the EU could be tougher on this if the company ever defrauded any EU citizens during the years, or if the company had any physical EU presence. They could prevent C-suite people from setting foot in the EU under threat of jail time once they stepped off the plane.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 29 2019, @09:33PM
Your ideas are interesting to and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 29 2019, @05:44PM (2 children)
too bad "schools" (slave indoctrination centers) don't teach people about Free Software. Instead these windows-using ignoramuses go to office depot(!) for "software". Predictably, Office Depot just wants to get in on the digital slave trade too. Government only fines them for interfering with their own slave business.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 29 2019, @08:57PM (1 child)
Holy crap. You're that guy who I DREAD will end up sitting next to me on a long plane flight on that trip where I forget my earbuds.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 30 2019, @06:39PM
that's funny, but people like me (real americans) don't fly since the tsa started groping/irradiating people, the patriot act, etc. you probably suck ass all the way through the airport like some manner of suited whore.
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Friday March 29 2019, @05:45PM (18 children)
Would some of the site Libertarians please care to explain how the market did not correct this problem a long time ago?
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday March 29 2019, @06:30PM (17 children)
Brainwashing/coercion to only buy Microsoft products? Educational shortfalls, which failed to teach anything resembling "computer science" in schools? The laziness of the consumer, which forces him to rely on the marketing departments of Corporate America to tell them what they need? I can see a lot of reasons why the market didn't prevent, or correct this problem.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 29 2019, @06:38PM (5 children)
But the "market" is still perfect right? What a strange deity you have, complete with invisible hands!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday March 29 2019, @06:50PM (3 children)
Whoa, whoa, whoa - just hold up there, you silly mule! When, and where, have I ever espoused that "free market" nonsense? I'm quite certain that I've pointed out a few times that we've never experienced a "free market" in any of our lifetimes. AT&T and Penn Power were well established monopolies years before I was born. IBM was a near monopoly. The Big 3 automakers shared a near monopoly by the time I was in junior high school.
I would like to test this concept of a "free market", but I'm sure that I'll never have the opportunity.
I suspect that the "free market" might be preferable to our current state of affairs. But, I also see potential pitfalls. Wall Street seemed to be doing well with it's version of "free market" in 1929, right up until the point where they weren't doing so well.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by NewNic on Friday March 29 2019, @07:01PM (2 children)
No true Scotsman, eh?
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 3, Funny) by deimtee on Saturday March 30 2019, @12:40AM (1 child)
True Scotsmen are in aisle six, $199.95 each.
-the Free Market.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 30 2019, @12:06PM
TruScot "Real Scotsman" with extra Kilt is in the endcap of aisle 7. Only TruScot can supply you with REAL True Scotsmen!
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Friday March 29 2019, @08:17PM
Do we need a new word for trolling with a strawman.
Trollmanning?
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday March 29 2019, @08:02PM (10 children)
Most of the people who go to Office Depot for technical support had no computer classes in school because when they went to school, a computer was and extremely specialized piece of very expensive hardware that as far as they knew at the time, most people would have no need to interact with directly.
The same era when a "car phone" was a device you saw on TV to let you know the character riding in the back seat was an important official.
So, it's back to why did the market utterly and completely fail to take care of the issue?
Claiming that each person should be a domain expert in every field is not a realistic response, that's just not going to happen.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday March 30 2019, @01:29AM (6 children)
Oh man - let me elaborate on that a little bit.
Graduating sixth grade, we went on a field trip to Pittsburgh, to the Carnegie-Melon Institute. We got to see a "modern" computer. We walked into a large public room, which had windows along one wall, through which we could see a working computer. Punch cards being prepared, people feeding punch cards to the machine, der blinkenlights as the computer digested the data fed to it. And we were told that this computer was one of the two most modern and powerful computers in the state of Pennsylvania.
None of us had any reason to suspect that we might ever own our own computers. Scientific calculators were something new and awesome, and Texas Instruments seemed like something far off and exotic.
Yet, here I am today, a member of SN, where I can engage in semi-intelligent conversations about computers.
I'll stick with my theory that people have chosen to be lazy, and allow Microsoft to brainwash and coerce them. "Computers are hard, you can't learn Unix, you can't learn how computers work, so just sit back, relax, and TRUST US!" People who trust car salesmen and horse traders pay a price for their misplaced trust.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday March 30 2019, @02:53AM (5 children)
OTOH, it's quite possible that one of your classmates is currently looking into someone's abdomen removing an appendix before it ruptures. Are you qualified to do that or were you just too lazy to learn a dead-ass simple surgical procedure?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 30 2019, @12:08PM
Probably parents were too poor to afford medical school.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday March 30 2019, @01:20PM (3 children)
LOL - some of my classmates were more successful than others - but none of them became surgeons. Almost all of my male classmates became competent to keep an automobile running pretty smoothly. If one can avoid the Microsoft nonsense, and all the brainwashing about licensing of software, and avoid the educational system brainwashing - keeping a computer running is hardly any more difficult than keeping a car running. Your comparison to surgery just doesn't cut it. Unless, of course, you're talking about rocket surgery.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday March 30 2019, @05:41PM (2 children)
So if it's something YOU learned, everyone should have if they're not lazy or stupid. And if they didn't, they deserve to be ripped off. If it's NOT something you learned, it's perfectly understandable and I presume you'd like some regulatory body to keep you from getting ripped off?
If somebody did devote their time to learning surgery, are they excused from auto mechanics or computer maintenance?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday March 31 2019, @01:58AM (1 child)
I'd have to consider that on a case-by-case basis. Of course, most surgeons are driving new cars, or collector cars, and they have high dollar, reputable garages working on those cars. They don't drive into the shop on the grungy side of town, which serves as a chop shop part of the time.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday March 31 2019, @03:11AM
And they're taking their computer to Office Depot or Geek Squad...
If they're doing their internship, they aren't driving expensive high end cars yet.
But the question remains, where is the market and it's miracle solution that doesn't involve the bad ol' government enforcing those pesky laws?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Saturday March 30 2019, @02:08AM (2 children)
This is the question I'm interested in. How bad does a big business have to screw customers to drive enough away to doom themselves? Why is the free market so unresponsive to such shenanigans? You don't have to be a domain expert to understand that Office Depot lied to and cheated customers. And, they have no monopoly, there still are several competitors even though they merged with their most direct rival, OfficeMax.
By rights, Office Depot should be facing a massive loss of business over this. Why would anyone trust their computers and other devices to them, after this revelation? I'd be wary of buying even basic office supplies such as printer paper. And, yeah, their ink and toner is massively overpriced. Is it that people think other companies are no better? I can sort of understand that, considering the history of the likes of Best Buy, CompUSA (R.I.P.), and even Fry's.
Maybe there will be a massive loss of trust and their customers will abandon them. Just need more time for word to get around. Lot of big box tech stores have failed.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday March 30 2019, @03:06AM
Because for the same reason they don't know how to diagnose and fix their computer, they don't know that OfficeDepot lied to them in the first place. The people who would know don't take their computer to Office Depot in the first place.
Perhaps, if enough people even hear of it, this bit of news will make some people change their minds (that's a big IF, the local news here hasn't said a word about it). But even that wouldn't be the market acting since this is only news because government acted.
The sad part here is that many who DO decide to go elsewhere will probably end up with Geek Squad.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday March 30 2019, @01:39PM
This is the day of big corporate mergers, buyouts, and takeovers. People tend to trust the biggest corporations. It's tough to quit doing business with someone, when they are the only game in town. Back in the day, when there were six different competing businessmen in the same town, it was easy to take your business elsewhere. Today - not so much.
I really don't know HOW badly a corporation can screw it's customers before it is forced out of business. Microsoft is still around?
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2, Informative) by RandomFactor on Friday March 29 2019, @05:48PM (2 children)
I remember back in the 80's, while moonlighting with a little no-account clone computer shop, being asked if i could write an app that went through a whole bunch of meaningless but real looking test screens and then flashed up 'Software Problem!.' (No I didn't do it.)
So this kind of skeeviness is nothing new.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Friday March 29 2019, @06:52PM (1 child)
If you run Windows, you can try out this program [donationcoder.com]. Writing code like this is always a fun exercise.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 30 2019, @04:36PM
If you run a time machine and have changed your ethics since the 1980s, this answer is useful.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 30 2019, @04:33PM
So did these criminals profit or lose money with this scam? They were fined $35 M. Their "service" cost $300. If they "served" at least 117 K people, they made more money. I don't know how large their operation is and I'm too lazy to find out.