Yesterday Google tried to give me a phone popup on the current score of a University of North Florida game. Only interpretation is they're inferring from all the times I've typed "unf" into Chrome and hit Enter before the autocomplete.
Why is neb still going on about the Troll of Sorrow?
Co-signed, except you really want to send these things certified mail with a return receipt. (The one I mailed two weeks ago actually *required* sending the request by certified mail. No love to you, Bandai Namco).
Timely, I'm extremely pissed at a company right now for sending a $25 debt to collections (for which we never got a notice or bill) when they still owe me a $20 refund promised via email. There is abundant online evidence of them running this scam from other people reporting similar situations, but of course they have an arbitration and no-class action clause in the TOS. The logical thing to do is just pay the $25, just sending the first certified letter to dispute the charge was $5, but I'm sure that's part of their business model. Whatever, I don't need any loans any time soon, fuck with my credit score if you want.
Are there actually sites that have mandatory arbitration but allow you to opt out of it? Usually the alternatives are (1) "accept" (2) "cut up your credit card"/"delete your account"/"eat my shorts."
Not sure about "sites", exactly, but here are some agreements with arbitration opt-outs I've filed lately:
- Bandai Namco, user agreement for playing Katamari Damancy Reroll
- Citibank credit card customer contract
- Lennox (furnace/HVAC manufacturer) warranty agreement
- Nintendo Switch End User License Agreement
- Sony PS4 User Agreement
- Sony Playstation Network (PSN) Terms of Service and User Agreement
Should actually be pretty doable with the Lob API, right? https://lob.com/pricing/print-mail
Is it worth $5 per signup for certified mail?
I was going to ask if anyone else still sees "TOS" and thinks "Troll of Sorrow," but 2 answered my question.
And saw it through without arbitration.
In the European Union there is a different approach, namely the Directive on unfair terms in consumer contracts, which effectively strikes out all unfair terms: "A contractual term which has not been individually negotiated shall be regarded as unfair if, contrary to the requirement of good faith, it causes a significant imbalance in the parties' rights and obligations arising under the contract, to the detriment of the consumer ... Member States shall lay down that unfair terms used in a contract concluded with a consumer by a seller or supplier shall, as provided for under their national law, not be binding on the consumer."
TAKE BACK CONTROL OF OUR LAWS.
14: Many U.S. states have similar principles in their contract law (probably with less bite as a practical matter? I really don't know), which is why so many consumer arbitration agreements have opt-outs: if you have an opt-out, when the consumer goes to court to say that the agreement is unenforceable as a one-sided, take-it-or-leave-it contract, the company can say that the consumer was free to reject/"individually negotiate" that term. That concern isn't as big as it once was (after what the Supreme Court has done over the last 8 years or so), but it's still a concern. And opt-outs are cheap for the companies, because (with some important exceptions) they are largely indifferent to whether a given claim proceeds in court or in arbitration: the point of the arbitration agreement is to make it hard/impossible for class claims to proceed in any forum. (Requiring consumers to simply waive their rights to a class action wouldn't fly in states that prohibit one-sided contracts of adhesion, but requiring "individual" arbitration gets you the magic preemptive power of the Federal Arbitration Act.) And as a practical matter, no matter how many people opt out, it's not going to be enough to constitute a problem from that perspective.
Perhaps the solution is to outlaw default settings in TOS agreements? I.e., if there's an arbitration clause, you have to select "yes" or "no" rather than unselect "yes."
17: yes, but if a state did that, it would just be a matter of time before the Supreme Court held that they were impermissibly singling out arbitration for disfavored treatment.
Often enough the contract is governed by the laws of the state the corporation is resident in or chooses and not of the consumer - so the more pro consumer your stste's Laws are the less likely they are to apply.
Often enough the contract is governed by the laws of the state the corporation is resident in or chooses and not of the consumer - so the more pro consumer your stste's Laws are the less likely they are to apply.
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277 page decision just came down from the district court on a huge, huge case I worked on -- we won, as we were expecting to, but now we have to wait and see what happens on appeal. But I am ridiculously excited and pleased.
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16, 17: the point, of course, is that actually opting out is much more burdensome (send a letter by certified mail within 30 days of signing up for the service) than signing up for the service in the first place. Simply saying "if you can opt out of (or into) anything, you have to be able to do it simultaneously with signing up/agreeing to the terms" isn't (substantively) singling out arbitration.
Thousands of Uber drivers requested arbitration with the aim of bankrupting Uber via arbitration fees. If you request arbitration is there any chance you can be forced to pay those fees, or is the worst that can happen is you have to pay what the company claimed (or get no award for damages) but they still have to eat the fees? Ie if I request arbitration for the bullshit $25 above, will they just drop it or could I end up owing $25 plus $2000 in arbiter fees?
21: woo hoo!
22: Of course not, but neither are most of the other things that the Supreme Court has deemed to impermissibly single out arbitration. The Court's FAA cases, you see, have been pure hackery, and we can be fairly confident that the hackery will continue for the foreseeable future. (Although ironically enough, about an hour ago they released a business-unfriendly FAA decision, but one with limited reach.)
24: Depends on the terms of the agreement, but many of them put all/most of the responsibility for arbitration fees on the company, again to help defend against unenforceability arguments. Not sure what the Uber agreements say about that. But agreements that make the company pay can give the consumer some leverage, when, say, customer service is being intransigent about a $25 dispute.
I want to disrupt arbitration with my new gig economy service, Judgr.