Misleading a customer on some data will cost hell lot of money to the manufacturer or a retailer. Here is a report that explains the whole idea.
A Washington D.C.-based woman has filed a case worth $54 million against the biggest US retailer Best Buy, over the loss of a laptop. Raelyn Campbell, who works for a nonprofit think tank, said that she filed the lawsuit to draw attention in the media and public about the misleading information on whereabouts of her laptop given by Best Buy, before confessing that it’s lost.
The laptop was lost on July 2007, whereas Best Buy agreed to it’s loss on 9th August and the lady sued the consumer electronics retailer in November. The main root of the lawsuit is to publicly embarrass Best Buy into changing its privacy policy in such cases.
On the contrary, the retailer did offer $1,110 and a $500 gift card reimbursement to Raelyn. She termed the compensation as a “lowball” on her blog that she has devoted to the issue. She also informed the public on the huge amount of money that she charged as compensation. She agreed that the $54 million in damages she was seeking was an absurd amount.
Best Buy is working on this issue and is scrutinizing it to find out what went wrong. Best Buy spokeswoman Nissa French declined commenting on the case because of the pending litigation. She added, ““We’re obviously embarrassed and disappointed that we were unable to resolve this customer’s issue. We’ve tried to resolve this dispute and feel badly that it escalated to a lawsuit.â€
Campbell had personal information that includes Social Security number and date of birth, which could be used by thieves to leverage her credit, in her laptop. And to get and explain the actual scenario to what happened to her computer, she spent over six months behind Best Buy. Sadly, the company never reported about the same.
So, it clearly claims that an indifference to privacy-protection obligations could lead to a legal procedure.
