See title - very frustrating. There is no way to continue to use the TV without agreeing to the terms. I couldn’t use different inputs, or even go to settings from the home screen and disconnect from the internet to disable their services. If I don’t agree to their terms, then I don’t get access to their new products. That sucks, but fine - I don’t use their services except for the TV itself, and honestly, I’d rather by a dumb TV with a streaming box anyway, but I can’t find those anymore.
Anyway, the new terms are about waiving your right to a class action lawsuit. It’s weird to me because I’d never considered filing a class action lawsuit against Roku until this. They shouldn’t be able to hold my physical device hostage until I agree to new terms that I didn’t agree at the time of purchase or initial setup.
I wish Roku TVs weren’t cheap walmart brand sh*t. Someone with some actual money might sue them and sort this out…
I suppose you’re in the US so I don’t know if my answer fits but if the terms are against the law they are simply void: as in if you have a reason for a class action, no terms or contract can take it away from you
Also, if outside of America, you probably would have a strong case for getting a full refund on the product if they did this.
It’s not (to my knowledge) a type of case that’s been specifically tested in court, but I think you could make a strong case that under Australian law, being required to agree to a new TOS that wasn’t there when you first purchased the device and which you don’t agree with would qualify as a “major problem”. The description of a major problem includes:
- is very different from the description or sample
- can’t be used for its normal purpose, or another purpose the consumer told the seller about before they bought it, and can’t easily be fixed within a reasonable time.
And when there’s a major fault, you as the customer are entitled to a full refund or replacement “of the same type of product”.
Unfortunately, if you did this, it would be the shop that sold you it that takes the hit, because you have to go to them to get the refund, not the original manufacturer.
Unfortunately, if you did this, it would be the shop that sold you it that takes the hit, because you have to go to them to get the refund, not the original manufacturer.
Couldn’t you just buy a new tv of a different brand from the same shop to offset the hit from the refund?
Most likely the terms say that you agree to go through individual binding arbitration rather than a lawsuit which the courts have found to be legal and enforceable. It’s really shitty and has become corporations favorite weapon to use against people, particularly because the arbitration companies are usually fairly friendly towards whatever corporation is being challenged. Contractually mandated arbitration really needs to be invalidated. Arbitration is a fine alternative if both parties want to go that route but it should never be forced on someone, particularly because of some bullshit EULA.
the arbitration companies are usually
fairly friendly towards whatever corporation is being challengedbeing paid directly by the company they’re arbitrating for, and therefore have a direct financial incentive to rule in favor of the corporation.FTFY. It’s way worse than just “being friendly” with corps. They’re on the corps’ payroll (indirectly, because the corp is paying for the arbitration,) and they know that if they continue to rule in the corps’ favor then the corp will continue calling them for future arbitration. There’s a tacit understanding between the arbiter and corporation, where if the arbiter favors the plaintiff then the arbiter won’t get called when the corporation goes to arbitration the next time.
afaik even those terms would be unenforcable if you can only see the TOS after buying the product, which would be the case here.
I don’t think so. I think in that case you would have to decline the terms and not use the thing. You would be entitled to compensation for the cost of whatever it was, like you can return it to the manufacturer or vendor somehow.
I’m really glad to live in the EU
No OP is mostly correct, you cannot enforce the terms of a contract that a side of the party cannot see until after the transaction was completed making arbitration clauses hidden inside products invalid. (Norcia v. Samsung Telecomms. Am., LLC)
However you are also somewhat correct as you are under no obligation to agree to the updated terms and conditions and will be govern by the originally concented contract until you do (Douglas v. Talk America). The company is allowed to stop providing their services to you however you might be entitled to your original purchase price depending on what the original terms and conditions said.
OK how do I go about getting Roku to refund me for my TVs? That sounds like an excellent approach to take.
Contact their support and escalate up the food chain until you get to someone who is in the legal department. If that fails get a lawyer and sue.
In EU they are unenforcable because they are illegal.
This is an adhesion contract (no counteroffer or ability to negotiate terms, and it was made unilaterally) and probably will not stand up to a challenge in court. Of course, someone would actually have to sue / afford to sue. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/adhesion_contract_(contract_of_adhesion)
Right it’s unenforceable however it’s plenty enforceable to poor people who can’t afford the legal fees.
This. I used a large-screen, dumb tv as a computer monitor for streaming for several years. My kid got his first real job and bought us a smart TV. It is so much worse…
Smart TVs are only bad if you do the dumb thing of connecting them to the internet.
I miss Dumb TVs, and Sceptre quality is too hit or miss to rely on them.
That’s a lot of money for a little baby TV.
Well, i spent 30 seconds on google and found that. Shop around. The point is that monitors are essentially dumb tvs and solve the issue of manufacturers no longer selling dumb tvs as tvs.
Monitors tend to not have remotes.
HDMI CEC will let your other devices turn on the monitor and switch inputs as appropriate. You’ll need some kind of AVR to play audio. Plenty of low cost, highly capable solutions out there like the WIIM Amp that lets you use multiple sources such as your PC or a dedicated streaming set top box.
Shopping around doesn’t help.
Calling it a monitor massively increases the price tag, more or less independent of features.
Yeah, computer monitors are manufactured to a different spec than television displays at the pixel level. This is usually called chroma subsampling.
Computer monitors typically are 4:2:2 or 4:4:4 which gives nice crisp and legible fonts. Anything less than 4:4:2 gives me a headache (also Windows…).
Television displays are usually 4:2:0. That’s fine for rendering large text that is visible across the room. But trying to edit a word document would be a terrible experience.
I believe they manufacture the television panels with fewer pixel address lines and that reduces the cost. Also, smart TVs sell ads and your usage patterns which are used to subsidize the cost of the tv.
That’s why computer monitors are so much more expensive than televisions.
There are plenty of cheap TVs that don’t do chroma subsampling. You can’t just ignore it, but you can absolutely get a 4K 40" TV that works perfectly fine as a monitor significantly cheaper than one branded a monitor. If you pay attention and use PC mode or game mode with all the processing turned off, you’re going to be fine. I do exactly that.
The price difference is way more about economies of scale allowing lower margins and the fact that they subsidize TVs with the bloat. Most people aren’t buying 40 inch monitors.
Can’t 360 noscope my movies without 120 FPS.
Those who want the link without the trackers
My man!
👍
I just stick with computer monitors these days.
“Smart” TVs are f****** ridiculous now.
Problem with monitors is they’re not practical as a TV replacement for a livingroom environment. The 16/9 ones pretty much top out in the 40s inch wise unless you’re going for something outrageously expensive like the Samsung Arc. Then you’re investing a lot into features that don’t necessarily benefit the livingroom entertainment uses like GSync if all you’re using it for is watching movies and TV.
There’s a lot of smart TVs that work great as dumb displays (my LG never shows anything from it’s OS, just my inputs) as long as you don’t connect them to the internet
Ditto for my Samsung QLED. It’s fine as a dumb monitor. Don’t connect it to the internet, throw the remote in a drawer, and use CEC streaming boxes and game consoles to control it.
There’s plenty available in larger sizes if you look for ‘commercial display’ instead, e.g.
Also you need to move on from ‘as long as you don’t connect them to the internet’. It may have been true once, it isn’t true anymore- see comments here about Roku TV including from OP and discussion on a recent Hacker news thread
These are digital signage displays. If you care about any of the features that make modern TVs look great, black labels, contrast ratio, HDR these won’t cut it.
And yes the bottom of the barrel brands like Roku and Viso will give you the bottom of the barrel experience. This is not the same if you go with something like LG, Samsung or Sony
I didn’t know there were any smart TVs that weren’t pieces of s*** anymore, so that’s good to hear.
Personally, I’ve never had a problem finding a large monitor that fit my living room well.
I buy a separate Chromebook or similar $30 used laptop and run everything off of that through HDMI to the monitor.
Cheap and easy.
use the search terms “commercial display” to find dumb tvs
Except if you care about anything having to do with picture quality, brightness, contrast ratio or features such as HDR etc, then it’s going to be a really shitty TV. They’re made for the menus at McDonald’s, not a device for modern media.
not quite. here’s one for ya
Nice find!
I’d be curious to see RTINGS do a review of the panel on it.
And be careful, a lot don’t have built in speakers either. Don’t just expect to get a TV out of a commercial display.
Eh, the built-in speakers on most TVs these days are all pretty trash across the board. You pretty much need a sound bar at the very least, these days.
Why do you call it “your” physical device?
Lol, point well stated…
Sections 1(F) and 1(L) seem like the only ways out/around of this. (IANAL; the bolding emphasis was done by me.)
F. Small Claims. You or Roku may pursue any Claim, except IP Claims, in a small-claims court instead of through arbitration if (i) the Claim meets the jurisdictional requirements of the small claims court and (ii) the small claims court does not permit class or similar representative actions or relief.
L. 30-Day Right to Opt Out. You have the right to opt out of arbitration by sending written notice of your decision to opt out to the following address by mail: General Counsel, Roku Inc., 1701 Junction Court, Suite 100, San Jose, CA 95112 within 30 days of you first becoming subject to these Dispute Resolution Terms. Such notice must include the name of each person opting out and contact information for each such person, the specific product models, software, or services used that are at issue, the email address that you used to set up your Roku account (if you have one), and, if applicable, a copy of your purchase receipt. For clarity, opt-out notices submitted via any method other than mail (including email) will not be effective. If you send timely written notice containing the required information in accordance with this Section 1(L), then neither party will be required to arbitrate the Claims between them.
IMO opting out is meaningless.
Despite the fact that attorneys are the primary beneficiaries of class action suits, the settlement dollar amounts are often high enough to give companies like Roku pause before they make consumer hostile changes. Not enough people will jump through Roku’s absurd opt-out hoops to make a class action suit worthwhile for attorneys, and thus those lawsuits won’t be filed in the first place, removing any risk to Roku no matter what BS they pull. They simply don’t give a fuck and don’t want that to end up costing them.
Of course the few people who opt-out can sue on their own, but the settlement dollars will be insignificant to a company the size of Roku.
Years ago being beneficial to the community was part of the mission statement of many corporations. That slowly disappeared and companies moved to customer service theater. Now even the pretense of being of benefit to communities and customers is being dropped and companies are regularly openly hostile outside their PR departments. And they wonder why people hate them.
Imagine the paperwork though (processing, tracking, etc.) that they would have to go through if everyone did send in a letter, option out.
I mean, we can stay cynical, stay beaten down, or we can push back. If enough people push back, you’ll definitely see change.
The problem is there’s always someone convincing people not to push back online, for some strange reason.
Lol! So you’re going to punish Roku about their consumer hostile stance with some extra paperwork? That’s the ticket!
Very, very few people will even take 10 minutes to open an online AG complaint about a company that is directly harming them by openly breaking the law. You think a comment on Lemmy (or anywhere) is going to make a damn bit of difference to a legal corporate practice that started long before social media existed?
I know a guy who has deal on a really great bridge…
You think a comment on Lemmy (or anywhere) is going to make a damn bit of difference
Funny you should accuse me of that. You might want to take a look at this post I just made on the same day I replied to you…
https://lemmy.world/comment/8140817
The only point I’m trying to make is don’t be cynical and just sit on your ass, and do nothing about it. Even if the only things you can do are small things, they’re still things that you’re doing.
At the very least you can look at yourself in the mirror, and if you’re lucky, you may help affect real change.
Sending opt-out letters to Roku, no matter how many the receive won’t make the slightest bit of difference and you know it. The points I made in my post are perfectly valid, both in respect to Roku and corporations in general. Affecting real change has nothing to do with Roku or a thousand opt-out letters.
Real, lasting change at this point can only be accomplished politically. Corporations will only change because they’re forced to and that doesn’t have a damn thing to do with my comment, or with yours.
So get off your high-horse, quit with the straw-man arguments and look at your own fucking self in the mirror.
So get off your high-horse, quit with the straw-man arguments and look at your own fucking self in the mirror.
NO U!
LOL! Did you learn that in nursery school?
You need your original purchase receipt to opt out? I hope that’s not legal. I wonder if roku could be subject to a lawsuit over this…
You need your original purchase receipt to opt out? I hope that’s not legal. I wonder if roku could be subject to a lawsuit over this…
IANAL, but the answer to your question would depend on the bolded part of the clause (‘if applicable’)…
Such notice must include the name of each person opting out and contact information for each such person, the specific product models, software, or services used that are at issue, the email address that you used to set up your Roku account (if you have one), and, if applicable, a copy of your purchase receipt.
Who decides what is applicable or not, and if the applicable scenarios are not listed in the terms, then are any applicable?
How does someone who is not a lawyer determine this so they can make an informed decision before they can agree to it?
IANAL, but the answer to your question would depend on the bolded part of the clause (‘if applicable’)…
It also depends on whether that clause is enforceable.
IANAL, and not that it really makes this bullshit any better but…
It’s unlikely that agreeing to terms of service that claim you waive rights to any class action lawsuit would actually hold up as legally binding in court. Many of these agreements aren’t reply binding are already legally gray… Plus, universally vaguely signing your legal rights away in any contract doesn’t hold any water either.
I highly doubt you’d actually lose any rights to a check box that’s bound to “you can’t ever sue us”.
IANAL either, but I’m pretty sure you are correct. I put it in another comment somewhere, but I’m more upset about not being given a choice to refuse the change rather than the actual change itself. I don’t mind signing the waiver at amusement parks, or to buy a car with no warranty. I just want to know what I’m agreeing to, and I don’t like folks pulling the rug out from under me or changing the deal.
The situation feels like if I were to drop out of college, I would be given electroshocks until I’d forgotten anything learned in class.
IANAL either, but from my understanding of contract law, not only are terms waiving your rights not legal, a contract necessarily entails mutual agreement followed by an exchange of a thing of value. In this case, they are holding a thing that you own (which they made and designed to work in this manner no less) hostage until you agree.
I don’t think that counts as an “exchange of a thing of value”. There’s no exchange there, so it doesn’t even qualify as a contract. Even if they’re supposedly adding features along with the update, if you didn’t agree to the features being added then that can’t be considered forming a contract either. Also it’s not free agreement on your part, so it fails on a number of levels.
In fact this behaviour sounds like it’s arguably illegal to me. It could even be the subject of a class action lawsuit. I imagine the courts would be especially unfavourable to the idea that they were doing this specifically to ask you to waive your right to do so.
The legal term is “consideration”. To form a contract you must have three elements: Offer, consideration, and acceptance.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure it would help here. They would argue their consideration is whatever online services are tied to the product, but even without that, the contract isn’t being formed at this point (unless someone is going through first setup, at which point they can still return it). The contract was already formed and this is an amendment to those terms that the original wording likely has weasel words to permit.That’s not to say the consumer has no recourse, consumer rights are probably the best bet. If the previous terms don’t expressly grant them the right to take away access to all features in circumstances like this, it may be possible to find them in breach, but unfortunately EULAs are usually pretty toothless when it comes to penalising the vendor.
I would like to know how much of this has been tested in court, and how much has just been insinuated by the sheer volume of corporate lawyers insisting that they’re allowed to pull this crap. Because you can just write any old junk down, but lawyers don’t make the law.
Like, on the basic level of what a contract is, how can one party reserve the right to unilaterally change the terms? How can an EULA be binding when the exchange has already happened and no agreement was made except the delivery of a product? How can consideration be forced on one party while their property is held ransom? And esepcially how can a fundamental legal right be waived in such a manner?
If this happened in any other sphere it would be understood as some kind of vandalism, theft extortion, or something. Like your builder just shows up one day, “Hey, I installed a new sink in your kitchen! You can’t use your house until you agree I’m not liable for anything that happens to your house from this point forward. No, you can’t read it, just sign it. This is a real contract because I gave you something of value.” I suspect this isn’t happening because it’s perfectly legal, but because the internet of things hasn’t matured enough to have strong legal precedents established and there hasn’t yet been a big public backlash against it.
I think the more they try to pull this garbage the more people will start to realise that this is bullshit and do something about it.
“How can one party reserve the right to unilaterally change the terms?”
When it comes to business to consumer contracts, often they can’t, due to “unfair terms” clauses in a lot of consumer protection laws.In this specific case, the fact you can opt-out retrospectively (and inconveniently of course) is certainly due to those laws.
But like you say, it needs to be tested.
IANAL either, but my understanding ends at the first letter in IANAL and all it means to me is that you do anal
From the start of your comment it sounds like it’s mutual ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
However I appreciate your feedback and from now on I will make it clearer that I ANAL.
Yeah, I totally agree with you, don’t get me wrong. I think it’s bullshit to switch terms. And also bullshit to write terms that just say “if we fuck you over, you can’t do anything about it”.
I just wanted to point out that the legality of it probably wouldn’t hold any actual water so don’t be totally paranoid about it and take it with a grain of salt. For anyone who’s a little more torn.
But yeah, Idk that I’d keep the device at that point either.
Oh, I am definitely getting more paranoid as I get older, but that’s a different issue altogether. :D
I highly doubt you’d actually lose any rights to a check box that’s bound to “you can’t ever sue us”.
Could the agreement not force OP to use arbitration if they wanted to sue, making it economically infeasible to do so themselves?
Pretty much all arbitration clauses require the manufacturer to pay for the arbitration. That’s the consideration offered by the manufacturer to get the customer to waive their rights to sue.
It’s actuaoworked out well for me I the past, because once you start going down the arbitration path, they’re more likely to just give you what you want since that’ll be cheaper than the arbiter in the end win or lose.
That is some grade A bullshit right there (not op, the Roku tv)
I have a dumb 4k tv. It’s cheap, it won’t meet everyone’s needs, but I really really really don’t want a smart tv.
It’s a Sceptre. Cheap enough that if it breaks it won’t break your heart to replace it.
Funny, I got a large Toshiba with fire TV because it was the cheapest option when I was looking, loaded with surveillance capitalism from Amazon.
Regretted it immediately, I would pay double for a dumb tv next time.
My tv is wonky as hell sometimes. I have to spray the volume button with contact cleaner from time to time or it turns itself up or down.
It’s fine other than that though haha.
I would like to see legislation that forces optional recalls or refunds whenever TOS updates modify the usability and viability of a product.
Honestly I feel like the real reason they are working everyone down to the bone is so they don’t have time to go to small claims court. If everyone did that individually these companies would die so quickly.
Take a brick to Roku until it agrees to your terms.
Mac address ban the TV from your network and it should work but will no longer have Internet access. I just did this locally and it worked for the one, have to go out but will do it on the other one as well.
In order to prevent it from blinking, factory reset the TV once it’s unconnected to the network, and then make sure to not reconnect it to the Internet during the setup process. Afterwards, you’ll be stuck trying to find ways to replicate all of the built-in functionality of the TV like I now am. I had no idea the Chromecast w/ google TV’s apps had such shitty surround support…anyone know a good replacement device? The ONN streamers are similar in that they basically only put out PCM stereo for Hulu.
I like everyone saying “but this is surely illegal!” as if these corporations actually care. At least in the US, it really doesn’t matter what the law says at this point.
Corporations will do what they want and the law will be modified to reflect that, this is the current status quo and it is going to take significant political action (specifically making rich people afraid again to piss the rest of us off too much) to make it change.
It’s just an exhausting uphill battle that never ends. I don’t have the time or resources to combat monied corporations.
At this point, it’s like they’re trying to get everyone to pirate everything.
Anyone else getting radicalized because of this?
Yup. My LG TV has 85% of it’s features “disabled” until I accept new terms which is an acceptable middleground.
I wanted a high quality OLED display over 50inch, good luck finding one without voice control or adverts lol
85% of its* features
Edited the one character typo for you, the internet is saved.
Is this what Tucker Carlson meant by I’m radicalized? Us damn rich Americans and our smart TVs.
Molotovs are easy to make and solve a lot of problems, just sayin
When I have a problem, I just throw a molotov cocktail and BOOM. Now I have a different problem.
To be fair, your original problem has been solved.
That’s probably really cute and fun to think about. Unfortunately we don’t live in a comic book universe.
Exactly, no asshole in spandex is gonna stop you!
Hisense did this to me and my TV, but in fact actually broke the TV’s wifi when it forced an update that I didn’t want and couldn’t decline. I argued with them and escalated it for 4 months and nothing came of it. I reported them to my state’s attorney general and the BBB. But this is definitely a class action lawsuit that will happen sooner or later.
I have a Hisense and had a similar experience. I was watching something fullscreen on an HDMI input, and then it suddenly switched inputs and showed a fullscreen firmware update prompt. I had no choice available other than to agree to update the firmware, no cancel button, couldn’t change inputs, nothing, the only choice was to update the firmware. So I unplugged the TV.
About 10 seconds after I powered it back on, the exact same update prompt happened, still with no choice to decline it. I pulled power and booted it back up one more time just to be sure, met with the update prompt again.
This made me very angry.
The next time I powered it on, I had a packet capture running to see where it was phoning home. I created a firewall rule blocking all the hostnames it tried to connect to at startup, pulled the plug, and then booted it back up. No more update prompt, and it hasn’t happened again. Good thing they don’t download and pre-stage the new firmware, I guess.
Let me know if you want the hostnames and I’ll PM them to you.
At this point I just refuse to ever connect smart TVs to wifi, it’s not worth it
Just in case anyone needs to hear this, bbb isn’t a government department. They are quite literally yelp before yelp and you can straight up pay to get bad reviews taken down from both. It would be better to our them on blast on social media since that sometimes gets the companies attention to try and fix PR.
It would be better to our them on blast on social media since that sometimes gets the companies attention to try and fix PR.
Works almost every time. I had a ticket with a vendor open at work for just about 3 months, and then only replies I’d gotten on the ticket was the “We’ve received your support request which we’ll promptly ignore!” autoresponse upon opening, and then another auto-response a month later saying the ticket was being assigned to another department. I’d replied to the ticket ~20 times asking for updates in that time.
I finally got sick of essentially yelling into an empty room and called out the company, their marketing team, their support team, and their CEO on Twitter, making sure to @ each one of them in the message. I got a reply from their CEO and an actual human responded to the ticket less than an hour later.
It’s shitty and a last resort, but it’s generally very effective.
Believe it or not I’ve had good luck a couple of times in the past when I was getting royally screwed over by what was supposed to be a legit company by looking up the email address to someone very high up in corporate, like the CFO or COO, and CC’ing them a reply in an already long and fucked up support email thread meandering down it’s path to nowhereville. I’m pretty sure I’ve gotten some of the CS reps responsible in deep water, too.
