If you bought an e-book between 2010 and 2012, you might have some money coming your way
Illustration: R. A. Di Ieso
Millions of e-book readers opened their inboxes and online shopping accounts today to find some extra store credit, courtesy of Apple. The payout is the result of an antitrust lawsuit that the company was found guilty of three years ago.
These customers, who purchased from a select group of conspiring major publishing houses between April 2010 to May 2012, will receive $1.57 in store credit per standard e-book and $6.93 for every e-book that appeared on the New York Times bestseller list. The store credit is being returned through customers’ iTunes, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble accounts.
The lawsuit, spearheaded by the U.S. government and levied against Apple, Hachette SA, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster, is among most significant antitrust suits of the digital age. The courts found that collusion between the companies led to artificial price-raising, despite the fact that the e-book format yielded higher profit margins. In 2011, the sales of e-books totaled nearly $970 million, a 117 percent increase from the year prior.
According to Hagens Berman, a firm involved in the class action suit, the consumer returns totaling $400 million in all, is precedent-setting. “We believe [this is] the only case in the country to have so much money returned directly to consumers,” said Steve Berman, a managing partner of Hagens Berman, stated.
Following the recent and comparable lawsuit-related refund from Ticketmaster in the form of free concert tickets earlier this week (thanks to deceptive service fees), some online shoppers are starting to feel like they’ve hit the lottery:
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