Wishful thinking: Why can’t consumers create a reciprocal TOS that undoes all of this like, an email response that says “by continuing to send emails to this address you agree to xxxxxx, otherwise the only form of acceptable correspondence is certified mail…”
Honestly I prefer arbitration agreements. My lazy ass aint making it down to the court house but you bet your ass I can fill out a form online. But yeah they and every other company are basically counting on no one ever doing anything.
I'm really hoping it blows up in some company's face where there are a lot of individuals with claims and it goes viral. Would tickle me funny if a Fortune 500 company got bankrupted by some zoomer on tiktok doing a stupid dance while telling people how to file for arbitration. AFAIK it is actually FAR FAR more expensive than a class action lawsuit if a non-trivial number of people actually file for arbitration.
Very likely you'll need to write a postal letter. Sign in with a notary. Keep a copy. Mail original via certified mail.
Related guidance for Chase arbitration policy opt out:
https://www.creditkarma.com/insights/i/chase-binding-arbitra...
I hate that this has been normalized, we can't seem to pass legislation to get rid of mandatory arbitration. The courts uphold this crap because it's supposed to be agreed upon by your own free will, but withholding service unless you give up your right to a jury trail is a bastardization, especially when this has become so commonplace you either live as a luddite or cede your rights. This is especially true for labor. We should have laws that say you can't withhold service or employment based on acceptance of arbitration.
I wrote more about this sort of thing here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37278222 and urge anyone who thinks arbitration is 'fair' to read https://www.epi.org/publication/the-arbitration-epidemic/
Some highlights - Employee win rates in mandatory arbitration are much lower than in either federal court or state court, with employees in mandatory arbitration winning only just about a fifth of the time (21.4 percent), which is 59 percent as often as in the federal courts and only 38 percent as often as in state courts
- Differences in damages awarded are even greater, with the median or typical award in mandatory arbitration being only 21 percent of the median award in the federal courts and 43 percent of the median award in the state courts
- average outcome in mandatory arbitration is only 16 percent of that in the federal courts and 7 percent of that in state courts
- The mandatory arbitration–litigation gap in outcomes has a direct effect on the ability of individual workers to recover compensation for the injuries they have suffered.
- ""The fact that it is not worth the expense involved in proving a statutory remedy does not constitute the elimination of the right to pursue that remedy.""
While this relates to employee vs employer arbitration - similar effects apply to consumer arbitration.
mandatory arbitration and class-action waivers are two of the most pernicious terms allowed in modern contracts of adhesion and must be fixed.
fyi, it was in the roaring 20's that the federal arbitration act (9 U.S.C. §§ 1-16) was passed (i.e., before our first crash). It says essentially that courts cannot intervene when arbitration clause is valid, and indeed must enforce the results of arbitration.
More recently, the Supreme Court held that a district court had to stay proceedings just because an appellate court was considering whether the arbitration clause was valid. So a hundred years later, it's being enforced to its fullest extent.
The FCC has regulations against negative options, i.e., making a contract if you don't do something, but online companies seem to get away with changing terms and prices, and requiring you to cancel your subscription or reject new terms.
To me it seems like a violation of contract to make a contract and then change the terms -- after the other party relies on the contract. But without any real damages, there's no money for attorneys to go up against the corporate attorneys, so the law continues to evolve in their favor.
If you haven’t heard, arbitration agreements are the shit.
Law firms have caught on and have figured out how to spam claims at corporations.
In arbitration, there is no option to combine cases into a class action suit.
Interesting. Amazon did the opposite back in 2021. They were hit with 75,000 arbitration claims, at once, regarding allegations of the Echo device secretly recording customers [1]. Now, all disputes of this nature are handled in federal court.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/22/business/amazon-arbitrati...
Did a quick google search and saw someone talking about this in 2019, and it raised a few eybrows then as well.
I don't like arbitration agreements generally, and I don't think they should be allowed be used so universally, but this doesn't seem especially obnoxious. It is just the terms for using their "digital services," and so it should not impact the terms you agreed to when you signed up for your account, which probably already have a separate arbitration agreement.
Is arbitration a bad thing in the context of personal banking?
Perhaps this only applies if you have a bank account with Chase? I have a credit card with them, but am not presented with an arbitration agreement when I log in.
I thought businesses had been moving away from imposing arbitration because it became too expensive?
Would this impact resolution of a disputed transaction when using their credit card product?
Not necessarily related:
- https://www.visualcapitalist.com/terms-of-service-visualizin...
- https://www.zzzuckerberg.com/
- https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/03/terms-of-... ... and yet people read terms of service
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I ran into this today.
Not only is Chase forcing me to opt into a 125 page agreement [0] in order to log in to my account—say, to pay my bill or check my balance—but that agreement has a new arbitration clause. The arbitration clause says you can opt out within 60 days but gives no instructions for how to do so. Not even an email address to contact.
I would love to log into my account tonight but won't until I know I can opt out of arbitration.
This upsets me, maybe more than it should, and I'm thinking of dropping Chase. Anyone else?
[0]: https://static.chasecdn.com/content/dam/legal-agreements/lib...