Microsoft Investigating Extent Of Abuse In Software Sales System
from the how-will-this-play-out dept
Following the news from a last week about the Microsoft employee who stole $9 million worth of software, Microsoft says they're investigating others who may have abused the system. This article also has more details on the accounting of how they came up with the $9 million number, saying that many of the products sold retailed for over $20,000. What I'm wondering is how many of these $20,000 products he actually sold. If you're going to spend $20,000 on a software product, I would think you'd make sure it was an authorized reseller or some sort, and not some random guy. The article also points out that none of these products had an actual cost of goods sold of more than $1,000 (which triggers an alert saying the boss has to approve the sale), giving you some idea of the markup margins that Microsoft puts on its products. It certainly seems worth questioning the $9 million claim, which is sounding more and more like Hollywood's claims of the "billions" lost to online file sharing.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
High markups
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: High markups
According to the original story he stole "more than 1600 pieces of software". That means he stole somewhere between 1600 and 1649 pieces of software, as any more would have been "almost 1700 pieces". So, for the sake of argument, let's say it was 1649 pieces of software.
Later stories point out he only purchased software that was less than $1000 to avoid needing a supervisor's signature. That means he stole a maximum of 1649 pieces with a maximum price of $999.99 each.
According to my calculator, that's a maximum of 1,648,983.51, which is significantly less than the $9,000,000 in damages that MS is claiming.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]