Hacker News Reader

Comment by NorthOf33rd | Hacker News Reader

Yep. a few years ago I signed up for a promo where if I spent a certain amount in the app store, I'd get a free chromecast. Never got it. No recourse available. At all. It's really strange that this level of "service" is acceptable.

View on HN

If your based in the US I'd encourage you to file a complaint with the FTC, this is considered "unfair or deceptive business practices."

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/media-resources/identity-the...

>No recourse available.

You can sue Google in small claims court for the value of the undelivered Chromecast and for the court fees you spent on suing them.

but it's generally not worth your time or money to do so

But it'd be interesting to see a LOT more small-claims court suits... a million paper cuts to bring some humility and service to the beast.

This won't happen, because Congress has done its best to try to limit action against corporations by trying to define everything under the sun as 'frivolous lawsuits that are clogging up our courts'.

True. The demand letter you write prior to filing a lawsuit will usually be enough, though. At some point someone runs the calculation between giving you what you want and fighting a lawsuit in small claims, and decides to give you things instead.

A Chromecast retails for ~$25. Even if the presiding judge decided to award 100x in 'punitive' damages, that's still $2500, which is far less than what it would cost Google to bother addressing the claim in court.

I would be too scared of Google closing my account as retaliation for this and me losing literally my entire digital life (family photos, my identity that's tied to gmail, etc).

Ever notice how Google Photos always bugs you to clean up your phone of your personal photos and move everything to the Google cloud?

someone should take that do not pay bot that fights traffic tickets and apply it to suing Google et al over these issues. https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/12/15960080/chatbot-ai-legal...

I could, and I probably should, but my time is worth something. For $25 I'd be doing it to make a point, but I'm not sure that point would actually be made.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com