Last November a court rejected Smarter Image's offer of a $19.00 coupon in settlement of their defective Ionic Breezes. Now we see that the Lawyers killed that business.

But sometimes it seems that when corporate America does wrong, they turn the crime into a marketing opportunity.

Now I'm well aware that in the majority of cases, there really was no crime, but the company settled rather than pay huge litigation fees. The Blockbuster late fee class-action litigation is brought to mind. I'm certain that if this country ever got serious about tort reform and the capping of attorney's fees in class action suits, that customers would get significant benefit in the instances when corporations actually screw their customers. In this regard CAFA, the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005, is a step in the right direction even though it comes at the expense of state's rights. Had the states themselves not got in bed with the attorneys to milk every business that they could, I might have been less sympathetic to CAFA.

There is enough false advertising and bogus sales promises by thousands of American companies that lawyers do not need to make up fake class-action suits. The only reason they ignore the small cases is precisely because the big cases, even when there is no real injury to any consumer, can bring in billions, yes billions to attorneys without actually paying a penny to a single person in the "injured" class.

I sometimes feel as if I should hire an attorney and sue myself so that in settlement I could offer coupons to every American so they would buy the services of my telecom company, which I will not name since this blog is not for pimping my business.

Again, a few years back, I had the same problem with Netflix as this fellow:

MSNBC,
10 Feb 2006,
Frequent Netflix renters sent to back of the line

Manuel Villanueva realizes he has been getting a pretty good deal since he signed up for Netflix Inc.'s online DVD rental service 2 ½ years ago, but he still feels shortchanged. That's because the $17.99 monthly fee that he pays to rent up to three DVDs at a time would amount to an even bigger bargain if the company didn't penalize him for returning his movies so quickly.

Netflix typically sends about 13 movies per month to Villanueva's home in Warren, Mich. - down from the 18 to 22 DVDs he once received before the company's automated system identified him as a heavy renter and began delaying his shipments to protect its profits.

The same Netflix formula also shoves Villanueva to the back of the line for the most-wanted DVDs, so the service can send those popular flicks to new subscribers and infrequent renters.

The little-known practice, called "throttling" by critics, means Netflix customers who pay the same price for the same service are often treated differently, depending on their rental patterns.

"I wouldn't have a problem with it if they didn't advertise 'unlimited rentals,'" Villanueva said. "The fact is that they go out of their way to make sure you don't go over whatever secret limit they have set up for your account."

Netflix says most subscribers check out two to 11 DVDs per month.

Los Gatos, Calif.-based Netflix didn't publicly acknowledge it differentiates among customers until revising its "terms of use" in January 2005 - four months after a San Francisco subscriber filed a class-action lawsuit alleging that the company had deceptively promised one-day delivery of most DVDs.

Of course, Netflix tried to turn this into a marketing gimmick as well:

ZDNET,
12 Jan 2006,
FTC fights terms of Netflix settlement

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has blasted Netflix, saying the company has tried to turn a class-action settlement into a marketing opportunity.

The agency filed an amicus brief last week asking a San Francisco judge to reject or restructure the terms of the settlement, which Netflix proposed in October after facing charges that it broke customers' service agreements.

"The commission takes no position on the merits of the underlying suit but is troubled by a settlement that appears to provide greater benefits to Netflix than to consumers," the agency said in a statement.

Under the proposed settlement, some current and former Netflix subscribers are entitled to either a free, one-month membership or a free, one-month upgrade in their service plan. But if members aren't careful, they may end up paying for the new plans down the road--after the first month, the company intends to keep customers signed on to the upgraded or renewed services while charging for them, unless the members proactively cancel or modify their plans.

There are 8 people living in my home with 8 television sets all hooked up to individual TiVos or DirecTVs so movies get viewed rather fast and furious. We were on the 3 discs at a time plan. As soon as my Japanese film came in, I'd watch it and whoosh, out it would go the next day. Ditto with some sci-fi flick for my oldest son. Something G-Rated for my granddaughter, a fantasy thriller for my younger son and my wife got a shot at romance or tear-jerker fare.

By the time the dust settled we'd burn through 24 to 28 DVDs a month. If the stars were aligned correctly and the sun, moon and earth were in syzygy (the only word in English with 3 y's and no vowels) we could turn 31 flicks a month.

But when the policy changed and we were marked as "abusers" our throughput was clamped down. Netflix's method was certainly ingenious. Instead of mailing from the closest shipping center (Netflix back then mailed out 1 million DVDs a day) they would ship from locations further and further away. So although we saw the disc marked "SHIPPED" online, it actually took a few days to get to us instead of the next day, effectively lowering our burn rate.

We decided to cancel and wait to build up a library of a few hundred movies to view so that there wouldn't be any delay in shipping. We restarted it again and it seems our old habits were not chiseled into stone somewhere and we are turning over quite a number of films a month. We order only HD or Blu-ray discs - once you've seen High Definition there's no going back to DVDs. We also put a thousand films on a media server so that any TV hooked up to an X-Box 360 can view movies on demand.

Obviously my family loves movies.

Click on the DHL photo above for details of the Synfuel Technologies, Inc. v. DHL Express case.