Iomega Zip Class Action Lawsuit: Free Coupons

[sgopal2]

If you bought an Iomega Zip drive between Jan 1, 1995 and March 19, 2001 you may be eligible for retribution from a recently filed Class Action Lawsuit.

For details goto http://www.iomega.com/rinaldi

I saw the add in USA today last week. I bought a zip drive in March 2001 and registered for the class last week. You do not need to show proof of purchase (receipt, UPC, etc). You simply need to enter in the date that you bought your zip drive and the serial number on the bottom of your drive.

Rebate coupons will be distributed in Sept 2002. From what I remember there are a variety of coupons...one that caught my eye was $10 off a pack of zip disks. There are some other useless coupons available. The last day to register for this is July 19, 2002, so hurry!

 

[mcveigh]

Thnanks!

 

[CKDragon]

I bought a computer with a zip drive in it (Gateway) many years ago, anyone know if this qualifies? I'd hope so...

CK

 

[Souka]

Heh...too bad I've removed the ZIP drives from my computers and have junked/given away most of them.

100mb or 250mb just isn't enough room, and not all that many people have a ZIP drive. But people almost certainly have a CD-drive....650mb.

MY $.02 and a bump.

 

[SP33Demon]

Do you have to answer "yes" to all of the questions about the clicking noise to get the rebate?

 

[natgas]

Don't think you must answer yes to anything; the fact is, maybe thousands of these drives went bad, especially back in 98-00; I had 3 go bad, but Iomega replaced all 3 and even replaced the disks that were ruined. My problem is that the settlement provides for a meaningless $$ off the purchase of other Iomega products that you can find at lower prices anywhere other than their site; I completed the forms for my two current drives, but I don't plan to buy anything through Iomega's site.

 

[buddha79]

I'm glad this suit is actually going somewhere, but all I get for my frustration is a measly $12.50 for some zip disks? The judge on this case should be disbarred. Send me a check for pete's sake! Anyway, here are the rebates they listed:

$17.50 toward the purchase of a Zip® 250 Drive; or
$12.50 toward the purchase of a Zip® 100 Drive; or of Zip¨ 250 disks; or
$40.00 toward the purchase of a Zip® 250 Drive and a 6-pack of Zip¨ 250 disks; or
$27.50 toward the purchase of a Zip® 100 Drive and a 6-pack of Zip¨ 100 disks; or
$17.50 toward the purchase of six Zip® 250 disks; or
$12.50 toward the purchase of six Zip® 100 disks; or
$12.50 toward the purchase of a Pocket Zip® - PC Drive; or
$35.00 toward the purchase of a Pocket Zip® - PC Drive and a 10 pack of Pocket Zip® media; or
$22.50 toward the purchase of a Pocket Zip® - PC Drive and a 4 pack of Pocket Zip® media; or
$30.00 toward the purchase of a Peerless? 10GB Bundle (SKU 31772 and 31767); or
$35.00 toward the purchase of a Peerless? 20GB Bundle (SKU 31774 and 31768); or
$15.00 toward the purchase of a CDRW Universal Form Factor (SKU 31475 and 32211); or
$20.00 toward the purchase of a CDRW Small Form Factor (SKU 31119 and 32214)

It seems like you don't have to use it at the Iomega store. "These rebates will be available for the purchase of one of these products from Iomega's on-line store, www.iomegadirect.com, or through the use of a mail-in rebate form." So it's instant if you use it at the store, or it's a mail-in form if you use it elsewhere.

 

[sgopal2]

Originally posted by: CKDragon
I bought a computer with a zip drive in it (Gateway) many years ago, anyone know if this qualifies? I'd hope so... CK

CKDragon:

From what I remember, ALL zip drives are eligible for this promo, even if its OEM....so I'd guess that your gateway zip drive would qualify. If its an internal drive, you'd have to open up the case and get the serial # from the drive. Good luck.

I also agree that the coupons are quite useless, but I use the zip disks anyway, and will end up buying a few.

Regarding the CD-RW vs Zip debate. I generally use two methods of backup for critical data: daily backup onto a Zip, then monthly backup by burning onto a CD-R. Doing daily backups of my critical stuff everyday using a CD-R is really not practical. I like the zip because I can backup my stuff everyday easily. I also bought one of the drives with the USB port so I can easily take it from computer to computer....enuf ranting for now.

 

[GPz1100]

It's too bad this is not like the old philips class action suit. Rebates there were actually useful ($200 off of a philips/magnavox product).

Like the old syquest sparq products, once you've experienced data loss with a particular manufacturer's product, its unlikely you'll want to go back to their product.

I think this is ajust a useless PR move by iomega so as to please the courts.

 

[jlv]

100mb or 250mb just isn't enough room, and not all that many people have a ZIP drive. But people almost certainly have a CD-drive....650mb.

That was my conclusion, too. I stopped using ZIP disks because of size (small), speed (slow), and cost ($$$$). I can use CDR or CDRW disks. I have several burners (and thanks to _this_ forum, my new 24x drives have all cost < $50), and I have piles of blank CDRs (all have cost $0). I even use DirectCD with the CDRs, which allows me to use them and toss 'em away. Given the cost ...

Why would I want a $10 rebate off a new $25 three pack of ZIP disks? I want Iomega to give me $10 back for the junk I already purchased from them!

(I knew this class action was going to end up like most others: benefitting no one but the lawyers.)

 

[Cal166]

Click! Click!

Damnit Whats That Noise

 

[slycat]

these hardly benefit the consumer at all...its another scam

 

[Optical]

I've had my drive in the closet for ages. I was among the very first ones (1997) when noticed this "click of death" crap. I still recall calling their tech support at the time and was told to me, "You must have dropped your drive!" excuse. I was pissed then shortly after that someone sued them and they admitted to the problem.

The funny thing is that they later gave me a replacement for free but I never really used it afterwards. It sits in my closet and not worth selling on the ebay (practically giving it away for free). And now they give you some coupon so you can make them more money. That's funny.

Agree, I would go CDR's. I think with thumbdrives and CDRs, this is old tech.

Still bump for the thread for getting back at them.

 

[dude]

Originally posted by: Cal166
Click! Click! Damnit Whats That Noise

I remember this happening to my freaking $300 external scsi zip! :| After going through a few zip drives, I decided to buy a hard drive instead. I was much more reliable and faster going this way, not to mention, cheaper! Of course, I later started selling and diagnosing systems, and you wouldn't believe how many people had the click of death. What a headache to us and the customer!

These coupons do nothing but make you BUY more of iomega's crap.

 

[Cheapest]

Every Dallars rebate to you there will be about $200 to the Lawyer!!! These lawyer will have children without bud!

 

[Startide Rising]

FWIW, external USB 100MB ZIP Drives are sold at Sam's Club for $59.97 each. They are powered by the USB connection and don't need an external power connection. So, $12.50 off that might be useful to someone. Unfortunately, right next to it is the closeout special of an external 24/10/40 USB 2.0 CDRW drive for $97.

 

[salfter]

Originally posted by: buddha79
I'm glad this suit is actually going somewhere, but all I get for my frustration is a measly $12.50 for some zip disks? The judge on this case should be disbarred.

The only "winners" in class-action lawsuits are the lawyers who organize the damn things. :| Consider a $10 million settlement as an example, with a class of a quarter-million. The firm(s) involved will probably take 30-50% of the settlement as their fee...we'll say 40%. That's $4 million for them, leaving $6 million to be divided by 250k. You end up getting $24 in the settlement. As they said in Aliens, "whoopy-fscking-do."

(FWIW, the ancient SCSI internal Zip drive I have (one of the ones that'll only fit in a 5.25" bay) has never given me any problems. It doesn't get used much anymore, though...last time I used it was maybe a year ago when I backed up my Mac to it. 100 megs is small, but the 80 megs that used to be in my Quadra 610 is even smaller. It shares an external drive case with a CD-ROM drive that I can move between my Mac and my IIGS. I could plug it into my x86 boxen, but haven't had any reason to do so.)

 

[zxcvb]

Anyone can supply a link to the form for this class action suit, I can't find it ?

 

[Otaking]

Originally posted by: zxcvb
Anyone can supply a link to the form for this class action suit, I can't find it ?

Er..you mean this form?

 

[dude]

Salfter, yes, I remember those days. I bought an external SCSI one for my Mac that had only a 70 meg hard drive back then. I also had a 40 gigger that I swapped out (that had different applications) when needed. Sounds silly now but do you know how much SCSI enclosures were back then? And the damn cable? $200 for the case and $50-60 for a damn cable!!!!

I was king back then with 16 megs of RAM, which cost about half of what the whole computer did.

 

[NetworkDad]

Finally, i never did anything with my zip drive that came in my old compaq from 1998. It clicked its way to hell.