Microsoft paid $10,000 to a travel agent after she filed a lawsuit against the Redmond-based tech giant for the automatic installation of Windows 10 on her business computer without her consent.
It is no secret that Microsoft is really pushing their users to upgrade to Windows 10. Users with legit copies of previous Windows operating systems are still viable for the free upgrade offer until the end of July.
The problem is that not everyone wants to upgrade but the offer still rears its head almost every time that a Windows PC is on. In the case of Teri Goldstein from California, she claims that the upgrade automatically installed on her computer even without her consent or command.
Goldstein complained that her computer was unusable due to several hangups and such which she blames on the Windows 10 upgrade from Microsoft, PC World has learned. The interesting bit was that the unwanted upgrade happened at the early release of the operating system when Microsoft was not aggressive yet in their campaign to push people to Windows 10.
In the earlier phase of Microsoft's Windows 10 rollout, only users who opted to reserve a slot for the free upgrade were allowed to download the installation files. Goldstein's case is unusual considering that the company was not yet forcing users to upgrade.
Plan A for Goldstein was to ask Microsoft for technical support regarding her Windows 10 computer crashing often but she said that they were not able to help, Geek reported. She then decided to file a lawsuit against Microsoft for the financial damages done by the unwanted Windows 10 upgrade.
The judge in the case sided with Goldstein and ordered Microsoft to pay $10,000 to Goldstein. However, Microsoft said that they settled to pay in order to avoid a lengthy legal process and not because they admit that there was a wrongdoing from their side.
Microsoft said that they are still investigating the case of Goldstein's seemingly unwanted Windows 10 upgrade. The case could be a dangerous precedent for users looking to sue Microsoft as well for the forced upgrade of their systems in the past few months.