Did you ever own one of the above two Smartphones, the Treo 600 or 650?
Like most people (including myself), if you had one of these devices, you were probably enthralled at how awesome it looked and how great it appeared to work. This euphoria probably lasted for a couple of days or even a week. Until one day, your Treo rebooted, randomly, for no reason at all. Then it would keep rebooting… sometimes once a day at a completely random time, again for no apparent reason. Maybe even during a call or when trying to send or receive a text message…. whoops! Reboot time. And then there’s the pinnacle of crashes: the imfamous infinite reset loop, where before you even get a chance to do anything, the phone will simply reboot over and over and over and over and over and over and over…
You probably had other problems too: certain programs would suddenly get corrupted. MP3s wouldn’t play right. Maybe your phone had crappy audio, and maybe you had to get used to the familiar sound of popcorn popping in the background… but there was no popcorn. It was just the static coming from your bluetooth headset, thanks to the Treo’s notoriously poor bluetooth implementation.
Some of us persevered, accepting our smartphones’ flaws as giving their phone some “character.” Yeah, right. And some of us got mad, and complained to Palm about the defects until they sent out a replacement… only to find that it had a whole different set of defects. Turns out, a lot of the Treos had unique combination of quirks… each having its own distinct, dysfunctional, schizophrenic personality, yet all were somehow focused and hell bent on making you less productive.
Most of us eventually gave up on the Treo in the end. A gadget geek can only take so much, and after a while, we moved on. Some bit the bullet and paid large sums of money to buy a new phone from their wireless carrier at full price, sinking hundreds of dollars into the purchase and cutting their losses. Others slogged it out for two agonizing years with their Treos until they could get a reduced-price upgrade again. Either way, most former Treo owners graduated to better things: Blackberries, Windows Mobile devices, Nokia smartphones, or even the iPhone. Palm, too, went on to other things and came out with other devices, some of which proved marginally better and somewhat less bug-prone. But not by much.
In any case, we moved on… until yesterday, when we all got an e-mail about a proposed class action settlement (PDF, 86K). Seems that thanks to some litigious soul and his stable of lawyers, Palm was made to understand that making and selling junk just won’t fly. Well, actually… they just settled to avoid the expense of a trial, and assert that “the settlement is not an admission of wrong-doing or an indication that any law was violated.” Gee, thanks Palm.
In any case, you’d think all of us who went through Treo hell are finally going to get some make-good. Or, are we? Well, according to the settlement e-mail:
You will be required to sign a declaration under penalty
of perjury that your Treo 600 or Treo 650 smartphone was repaired or
replaced at least twice and you will be required to provide
documentation for at least one of the repairs or replacements.
Setting the bar pretty high, aren’t they? Quite a few people gave up after one repair or exchange, especially after hearing the horror stories of others as posted in online discussion boards where who went through the multiple-replacements only to end up with a refurb that had MORE problems than their original phone. Others saw the mess that others were going through and grudgingly “accepted” their phone’s defects for fear of getting something even worse, or paid big money (like I did) to get something else. And for that, we get nothing.
It gets worse: The settlement e-mail indicates that the lawyers got paid $1.5 million to come up with this drivel, and “named plaintiffs” (the people who hired the lawyers) get paid $21,000 each. How nice for them.
Are you mad about this too? Well, there is hope:
If you stay in the Class, you may object to the settlement.
Objections must be received by April 7, 2008. The detailed notice
describes how to exclude yourself or object. The Court will hold a
hearing in this case (In re Palm Treo 600 and 650 Litigation, Master
Case No. C-05-03774-RMW) on May 2, 2008, at 9:00 a.m. to consider
whether to approve the settlement and attorneys’ fees and expenses
totaling no more than $1,554,000 and incentive payments to the named
Plaintiffs in the aggregate amount of $21,000. You may appear at the
hearing, but you don’t have to.
Obviously I’m no lawyer. But if you ask me, I think those who are getting screwed by this settlement may want to consider objecting.
Full settlement documents can be found at www.palzasettlement.com.