14 DAY TRIAL // People might not know it, but word of an alleged price-fixing conspiracy on the DRAM market has been going around for years, and now it seems that things are coming to a head.
A new website called dramclaims.com has appeared following a ruling in the DRAM Indirect Purchaser Antitrust Litigation, which lets everyone in the general public lodge a complaint with DRAM manufacturers.
It happened because it was found that DRAM makers, some of them anyway, were involved in price fixing between 1998 and 2002.
So now anyone can sue whatever company they bought their PC memory from. Well, so long as they didn't buy the DRAM straight from DRAM makers. Only if you bought a pre-made PC, laptop, mobile phone, game console of graphics card.
Although if you bought a Kingston or OCZ memory module that was actually manufactured by someone else, you could argue your case that it is an indirect purchase.
Anyhow, a typical claim, if won, will get you $10 / €7 in compensation, or up to $1,000 / €720 if you're lucky, or bought a particularly high-end piece of equipment during the 1998-2002 period.
Not a very big incentive really, but I imagine that some people will try just to see if it's true that they now can win a small victory against the system, if nothing else.