Forced Arbitration Isn't 'Forced' Because No One Has To Buy Service, Says AT&T (arstechnica.com) 342
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AT&T is denying that its contracts include "forced arbitration" clauses, even though customers must agree to the clauses in order to obtain Internet or TV service. "At the outset, no AT&T customer is ever 'forced' to agree to arbitration," AT&T Executive VP Tim McKone wrote in a letter to U.S. senators. "Customers accept their contracts with AT&T freely and voluntarily; no one 'forces' them to obtain AT&T wireless service, DirecTV programming, or other products and services." AT&T was responding to concerns raised by Sens. Al Franken (D-Minn.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), and Edward Markey (D-Mass.), who previously alleged that AT&T's use of forced arbitration clauses has helped the company charge higher prices than the ones it advertises to customers. While AT&T is correct that no one is forced to sign up for AT&T service, there are numerous areas of the country where AT&T is the only viable option for wired home Internet service. Even in wireless, where there's more competition, AT&T rivals Verizon and Sprint use mandatory arbitration clauses, so signing up with another carrier won't necessarily let customers avoid arbitration. One exception is T-Mobile, which offers a way to opt out of arbitration. The terms of service for AT&T Internet and DirecTV require customers to "agree to arbitrate all disputes and claims" against AT&T. Class actions and trials by jury are prohibited, although individual cases in small claims courts are allowed. AT&T doesn't offer any way to opt out of the arbitration/small claims provision, so the only other option is not buying service from AT&T.
No one is forced my ass (Score:5, Informative)
In a lot of markets, AT&T is part of an oligopoly or even may have a monopoly. High speed internet is necessary for a lot of people, especially if they need it for their jobs or classes. When there are very limited options for service, AT&T and their competitors might all include forced arbitration clauses. Get rid of the monopolies and oligopolies, and perhaps AT&T might have a point. Right now, the statement sounds like something I'd say when I'm trolling. No one is forced my ass. Bring in more competition, then we'll talk.
Re:No one is forced my ass (Score:5, Interesting)
Has anyone here ever received anything of value from a class action lawsuit? My best win so far is a $10 check. Most of the time I never received anything, and a few times I have received useless coupons.
On the other hand the lawyers doing these suits get paychecks of $10M or more. And where do you think this $10M comes from? It is being added to the price of the product. I think it is probably more cost effective for consumers that these class actions are stopped. I don't really see them as helping consumers, instead they just enrich lawyers.
I think it is far more effective to bombard a company with a thousand individual small claims. That makes them have to show up which costs them a lot of money. And get this -- you can actually win in small claims. My best win in small claims is over $5,000. Several times the judge has just ripped up their thirty page contracts, asked their rep if I have been harmed, and when they say yes, he awards what I am asking for. These small claim judges work more on what is a reasonable outcome, not on what is contained in a lopsided thirty page contract which the consumer is powerless to alter.
In one case the judge even yelled at them for putting such ridiculous clauses in the contract. That was with ADT which has a clause stating that if you moved the contract automatically extended three years. I had moved three times so my original contract had extended to 12 years. Then I moved into a high rise which did not allow alarms and tried to terminate. ADT demanded over $10,000 to terminate my contract. They ended up with nothing.
Re:No one is forced my ass (Score:4, Insightful)
> Has anyone here ever received anything of value from a class action lawsuit?
Yes. Safe consumer products.
Civil servants don't have the resources or motivation to properly enforce this stuff.
The point of class action suits is to keep corporations in line and prevent them from turning you into green crackers. It's not about a personal pay day for you.
It's not even about a personal windfall if it's just you and it's an injury lawsuit. It's about holding the responsible party responsible.
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It is not obvious to me that class actions achieve anything other than enriching lawyers. We may have some lofty goals that class actions are supposed to achieve, but in reality they don't seem to achieve those goals.
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This is getting pretty close to "follow the money" as a certifiable intellectual disability.
Indeed, the American adversarial "free" market regulatory function is implemented more cheaply—as perceived through a conspicuously charismatic megadollar mental metal-detector—by "big" government oversight in many other free-market(ish) democracies.
But isn't it funny how, at the end of the day, one needs to add up
It generally makes the companies stop the behavior (Score:3)
Re:No one is forced my ass (Score:4, Interesting)
Much more impact could be created by publicizing packets of info instructing exactly how to file the small claim and what to say. Filing small claims is usually less than $100 and you almost always get more than $100 back. And filing small claims very clearly lets the corporation know that their customers are upset with them. That turns the customers in to real people, not just faceless names. Plus I've only had two companies argue with me, the rest have settled and tried to patch things up. Base on my tiny sample two responses occur - we're sorry, let's try to make things right - or please refer to the fine print on page 31, now read the clause on page 7, next the judge yells at them and tells them to write contracts consumers can comprehend.
These large class actions just get shuffled off to the legal department and ignored as a cost of doing business. I think they are completely ineffective and only serve to enrich the lawyers. Making the settlement bigger will get transferred directly into higher product prices.
Of course filing a small claim means you personally have to take some action which is much more effort that signing the bottom of some form that comes in the mail. In my opinion the cumulative effect of the small claims is much more impactful.
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Something about forced your ass? ... go on...
Re: No one is forced my ass (Score:5, Insightful)
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AT&T and Verizon did not "work out" regional monopolies. They were granted monopolies by the local governments, and are prohibited from competing with each other by the terms of the Bell Telephone breakup which split the original AT&T into lots of smaller phone companies who provided service in different regions.
Re: No one is forced my ass (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe for rural farmers in nowhere Indiana. For the rest of the developed world, internet is a necessity to conduct business and live a modern life.
Re: No one is forced my ass (Score:2)
Maybe for rural farmers in nowhere Indiana. For the rest of the developed world, internet is a necessity to conduct business and live a modern life.
Maybe try wireless, isn't great cell coverage one of the great things about not living in "nowhere Indiana"?
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But since most jobs require you to "go to our website to apply", not having internet drastically reduces your ability to provide for yourself. Yes, it's not a necessity in the same way electricity isn't a necessity, your life can continue on without it, but you will be at a disadvantage compared to everyone else.
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Re: No one is forced my ass (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm afraid that there are too many cases where "just get another job!" has been an excuse for systemic Gender abuse, racism, and homophobia in the workplace are merely examples. It's also included unpaid overtime, nepotism, sexual harassment, and employment fraud. Forced arbitration, which is what this inherently is for all employees, provides much stronger benefit to the larger legal entity, who is typically the entity that selects the arbitrator. These arbitrations are also typically sealed: the evidence submitted to them is not available to any other possible plaintiffs.
From my experience with corporate lawsuits, they're workable for modest cases where the cost of a lawsuit would outweigh the cost of any reasonable settlement. But they have no legally binding force for anyone but the plaintiff and that company's relationship with that particular plaintiff. For widespread workplace abuse, they're not helpful at stopping or preventing the abuse as a matter of policy.
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And if you know you're going to face those adversities at a prospective employer, don't take the job in the first place. Your talents (the collective "your", not you specifically because this doesn't apply to anyone who can't follow this line of reasoning) are too valuable to offer them to someone who will abuse you.
Re: No one is forced my ass (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a better analogy. What if ever single company you applied for included a job application form in which in agreed to solve any dispute about discrimination through arbitration? And then, when you got the job, the contract had a clause in which you also agreed to solve any employment dispute through arbitration? Should that be legal? After all, you're not obliged to work for a company that does that, you can chose any other one. No company left not doing it? You can start your own business! Except all the businesses you need to deal with so as to be able to have one of yours have similar clauses in their contracts. Well, you're not obliged to have a business! You can... er, become a beggar, I guess?
No system of laws should allow contractual clauses to overcome legal rules. The hierarchy of authority should *always* be that only what *isn't* determined by a law is free to be contractually determined between parties. Everything else, the law should take precedence. Don't want that law? Vote a legislative body that will clearly and unambiguously revoke it. But don't insert in the system "option" stuff. That's a recipe for all kinds of extremely damaging slippery slopes.
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In the UK the only way of submitting a VAT return (aka quarterly Sales Tax report) is on-line. Access only on-line to other government services is the way that things are going. That makes it a necessity.
Re: No one is forced my ass (Score:3)
He is wrong, but not because of why you think. AT&T are asserting their market position, because the market will bear it. They spent the time and money to build out to where they are one of a few if not the only carrier, and so they can corner you into unreasonable agreements. The response should have come from negotiations with he municipalities that gave these ass-hats exclusivity arrangements and tax dollars to build out. The pricing, terms, and arrangements should have been negotiated then, not now
Re: No one is forced my ass (Score:5, Informative)
having an internet connection is not a right.
It is enough of a right that the supreme court ruled Social networking website bans for past sexual offenders [arstechnica.com] unconstitutional.
All they did was block gov't bans (Score:2)
Re: No one is forced my ass (Score:5, Insightful)
Demanding that someone subsidize or provide you pen and paper is not.
I just demand fair, reasonable, non-discriminatory, and equitable access to purchase pen and paper (Or Internet access) without
being requested or required to sign over or waive any basic rights in the process, including the right to have disputes between me and a vendor mediated by the courts, and to pursue class action if damage or deception is committed against a large number of customers .
Utility, not a luxury (Score:5, Informative)
having an internet connection is not a right. its a luxury good that you choose to buy or not.
No, it is a utility just like gas, water and electricity. In theory, you can survive without all of these but you would be camping in your house and while an internet connection might be regarded as a luxury while camping it isn't really a luxury anymore for everyday life. In addition, the cost of duplicating the infrastructure to each house means that at a local level there is no real competition which is how capitalism keeps companies focused on providing the best service. Hence the utility market has to be heavily regulated otherwise companies can abuse their monopolistic power by putting unreasonable terms into their contracts leaving consumers with a choice between accepting them or house-camping.
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The fact that it is or isn't a luxury good is irrelevant. Their market is a small oligopoly. The tolerance of this nonsense effectively strips everyone of their rights. One jackass gets away with it and the other 2 jackasses follow suit. Some contracts are illegal as a matter of public policy. Being forced to sign away your rights to be able to use an entire class of good or service should fall into that category.
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Even job hunting requires access for all but the most menial of jobs
Nope, this is why "An Unregulated monopoly is the only thing worse than a Regulated monopoly".
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There's the internet (Score:2)
There are alternatives. The question is do we as a society want to subsidize folks with less money to have more access than is strictly necessary? I'd personally say yes, since I want their kids to have easy
Re: No one is forced my ass (Score:2)
That you rely on something doesn't make it a right - Define what a 'right' is please (hint, it doesn't involve the requirement that someone provide a good or service to/for you)
No *customer* (Score:5, Insightful)
[...] no AT&T customer is ever 'forced' to agree to arbitration [...]
[...] no one 'forces' them to obtain AT&T wireless service, DirecTV programming, or other products and services.
So basically, you only qualify as a customer if you do use products or services (that require agreement), but no customer is ever forced? I fail to see the logic here.
Re:No *customer* (Score:4, Insightful)
They're not a customer unless there's a contract, so it's the opposite of what AT&T claims - all customers are forced to accept arbitration.
Of course, if they want that claim to be true, they simply have to stop enforcing (or remove) that clause.
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If there are two restaurants, one which servers only hamburgers, and one which serves only cheeseburgers, and you choose to go to the cheeseburger shop, you are not being forced to get cheese on y
quite peculiar (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is it that American law permits clauses in contracts that deny people access to the law of the land?
It's quite peculiar. In the UK any contract that attempts to limit a consumer's statutory rights and legal protections is automatically void. It cannot be done. This is why most sales contracts actually state that "This does not affect your statutory rights", because it cannot.
American law? (Score:5, Insightful)
We are a plutocracy in this land. Shit like this is forced on us without a peep from most people because they are being distracted by other issues. They don't care until the day comes that AT&T screws them over and discover that they have no choice but to pay up and shut up.
While they are being gouged by the ISPs and given third world quality service, they are all being distracted by the latest tweet from the Big Orange small fingered vulgarian in the Whitehouse. While my state legislature (mostly Republicans) are being "lobbied" by these ISPs to keep their un-free markets and not-capitalistic business models, they are arguing over laws about who can use what bathroom depending on the sex on one's birth certificate.
And my fellow citizen's allow themselves to get sucked into a moronic fight.
That's the state of the American people. And we blame immigrants for our declining standard of living.
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Yes, even in the US this is absolutely true, also unilateral contracts (one where all terms are set by a single party like an eula or a conditions of sale contract) are seen very different from a bilateral contracts and do not have anywhere near the same enforcement value.
The courts frequently strike down such arbitration clauses as such clauses are direct unilateral violation of rights in a given jurisdiction.
IANAL
Re:quite peculiar (Score:5, Informative)
That's obvious, because you're wrong.
The Federal government passed the Federal Arbitration Act, which authorizes such arbitration clauses, and there's a pesky thing in the Constitution called the Supremacy Clause. AT&T itself won a U.S. Supreme court case that said that the Federal Arbitration Act of 1925 preempts state laws that prohibit contracts from disallowing class-wide arbitration [wikipedia.org], on the basis of statutory interpretation, since nobody seriously questioned that wireless contracts were within the scope of the Interstate Commerce Clause.
Specifically, [supremecourt.gov]
IAAL.
Wrong (Score:2)
Yes, even in the US this is absolutely true, also unilateral contracts (one where all terms are set by a single party like an eula or a conditions of sale contract) are seen very different from a bilateral contracts and do not have anywhere near the same enforcement value.
The courts frequently strike down such arbitration clauses as such clauses are direct unilateral violation of rights in a given jurisdiction.
IANAL
No.
Contracts of adhesion may be interpreted against the drafter, but the drafter still gets to write them. They are still binding better than nine times out of ten. In very rare cases you may have a successful argument voiding some portion of them, but this is uncommon, especially if they are decently drafted.
Arbitration clauses and class action waivers are also binding. There are some ways to get around them sometimes to an extremely limited degree (for example, maybe you can litigate whether or not an arb
Re:quite peculiar (Score:4, Insightful)
There are three major problems with how the American legal system works with stuff like this:
Re: quite peculiar (Score:2)
You can challenge a contractual clause that requires binding arbitration, but the defendant will immediately file a motion to dismiss on that basis, and you'll have a hard time winning that fight.
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Binding arbitration exists in the UK, just like it does in the US.
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Why is it that American law permits clauses in contracts that deny people access to the law of the land?
That's incendiary phrasing. You could ask why does British law forbid people the right to designate an arbitrator to resolve disputes. Both would be formulations of the question that do not shed light on the tension between two goals: giving people the power to determine their own arrangements versus ensuring that those arrangements are not contrary to public policy. Those two goals are non-orthogonal.
To make it more concrete (and over-simplified), let's say that Alice hires Bob to write and deploy some sof
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The problem in your American scenario is that Bob and Alice came to a mutual agreement (a meeting of minds) to have Cherles arbitrate.
To match the situation in TFA, Alice has killed literally every other developer out there. She writes in the arbitration clause naming her cousin Charles as the arbitrator and tells Bob "sign it or pound sand meathead!".
They're not wrong (Score:4, Interesting)
True, but if there weren't any regulators (Score:2)
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Correct, so from there it's a question of how to effectively maintain the commons without looking like Asia. In that you have 3 main things last mile, long distance, and wireless. The last mile needs to become town-owned, bury a fiber per endpoint and mux light onto them. The old Phone company CO's seems like a good spot for this to terminate at let players rent space or simply backhaul.
Long-haul the market works companys lease space from railroads etc bury fiber and resell access to it.
Again, can't we leave it to the free market? (Score:2)
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Last mile aesthetic so many wires on the poles via multiple providers.
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Yep :) (Score:2)
Did they really? (Score:2)
If you're talking about the line poles, well, AT&T paid to put those up, didn't they? Why shouldn't they have the right to say what's done with them?
They broke the Bell's up decades ago. The problem was solved. Again, why can't we just step back and let the free market sort it a
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They put them on (mostly) public rights-of-way, at a time when they were given the status of a regulated monopoly because of the perceived efficiencies of only building a single wired telephone infrastructure.
It's not a free market unless at a minimum they're forced to negotiate with local municipalities and landowner's for continued use of those rights-of-way.
The Canadian Supreme Court disagrees (Score:5, Interesting)
In cases where the company is breaking Canadian law, contract language to force arbitration in California is null and void. A class action about “Sponsored Stories”, which uses the name and picture of a customer "without consent for the purposes of advertising" will go forward.
The legalese is summarized at http://www.slaw.ca/2017/06/28/... [www.slaw.ca] and the full case is https://www.canlii.org/en/ca/s... [canlii.org]
It's primarily an arguement about choice of forum (country) in a contract.
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I'm voting with my wallet! Hang on, I'm just gonna unplug my only internet option... wai
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I was thinking that we (US customers) could sue AT&T in Canadian courts. After all, it's possible to sue foreign entities for committing alleged bad deeds overseas in US courts. And US courts can serve warrants overseas. In Ireland, for example.
Turnabout is fair play.
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Everyone knows this is bunk. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Time For Guillotines [youtube.com].
I can't really tell whether he's joking, but the people in the comments kinda seem to mean it...
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I can't really tell whether he's joking, but the people in the comments kinda seem to mean it...
Nothing else is working. They don't react to polite requests, they don't react to threats, they don't react to ecological crisis...
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Well, we've gone through 3 of the 4 boxes of liberty [wikipedia.org] by now.
Well, that's certainly the option I've taken (Score:2)
AT&T doesn't offer any way to opt out of the arbitration/small claims provision, so the only other option is not buying service from AT&T.
When our $50/mo POTS line went down, ATT told us that it was going to be six weeks to get it fixed. And that's when we stopped using ATT. Now it's just cells from T-Mobile. They already didn't bother to offer DSL at this address, in spite of the fact that it's offered at both ends of the loop road I live on, and the fact that We The People actually paid the telcos hundreds of millions of dollars to push DSL to the last mile, which they gave away as executive bonuses.
ATT is a criminal enterprise.
Hobson's Choice (Score:2, Interesting)
Philosophers call this sort of "choice" a Hobson's choice. See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobson%27s_choice [wikipedia.org]
Right to real property (Score:2)
In the case of last-mile wired Internet, the government-granted monopoly in question is the right of an owner of land against destruction of his property by an intruder. Someone burying cable under a non-subscriber's land to reach a subscriber's land is an intruder. How would you practically do away with that law?
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This is last mile internet access, which is a natural monopoly. Natural monopolies aren't created by governments; in fact the government's role here is to step in and prevent abuse of the monopoly (or even better, to run the last mile themselves so that many ISPs can compete in offering service over it).
You should be criticising your legislators for failing to do that.
Force depends on the alternatives (Score:4)
Not on someone physically pressing you to do it. You're not forced to cheer on li'l Kim in North Korea. You can always opt for the lengthy stay in one of the reeducation camps where you get taught why you want to cheer on him. You're not forced to take a job in a country where welfare doesn't exist, you can always freely opt to starve to death.
Whether you are forced to do (or not do) something is not dependent on someone pointing a gun at your head but on the alternatives you have. And internet access has become pretty much a necessity these days, certain services are either hard to get or entirely unavailable to you if you do not have internet access.
A century ago, you would have argued that access to power or telephone was, if not a luxury, then at the very least far from something that was to be expected. Try, just TRY, to apply for a job today and not offer a phone number where the prospective employer can reach you. You wouldn't even be considered for a burger flipper job if I can't get a hold of you NOW, not in the 3-4 work days it takes for a letter to reach you and your reply to reach me.
And no later than any office job, you better have some way to get email from your prospective employer. I cannot think of any job I had in the past 2 decades that didn't require me to have an email address and a way to check it frequently.
Catch-22 (Score:2)
Try, just TRY, to apply for a job today and not offer a phone number where the prospective employer can reach you. You wouldn't even be considered for a burger flipper job if I can't get a hold of you NOW
Then where is someone supposed to get the money to buy his first phone service subscription to get his first job?
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His parents.
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Wow, where do you get that from?
wasn't this addressed in the securities industry? (Score:2)
IANAL, but I seem to recall there was a lawsuit over mandatory arbitration clauses in stockholder/security broker contracts.
There's always other options (Score:3)
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Where I live for example, there's also carrier pigeon and smoke signals...
Luxury - where we live we have to use runners with cleft sticks, who only work every other Tuesday. And that's if we're lucky!
At my apartments (Score:3)
Internet access needs to be utility (Score:2)
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Benefit of requiring sites to be usable over 14.4 (Score:2)
If a particular data rate becomes a standard, then site operators are going to have to either make their sites practical to use at the standard rate or be shamed for not complying with standards. This means no reliance on a megabyte of jQuery. It also means transcripts of videos.
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FFS, it's a phone contract (Score:2)
You buy a mobile phone, you pay $50-100/month. If you don't like it, you go somewhere else. What exactly are you planning on suing AT&T for?
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If AT&T is the local DSL provider in your area, and no DOCSIS (cable Internet) provider serves your address, then who provides Internet access suitable for an entire household? Or would you recommend moving in such a situation?
You are to blame (Score:2)
Time to break up some companies (Score:2)
That no one chooses to offer a competing service (Score:2)
That no one chooses to offer a competing service doesn't force AT&T to change it's TOS.
Forced? No. (Score:2)
Kind of like how people are "forced" to give their money to AT&T in the form of payments for services? Or "forced" to use phones compatible with AT&T's networks?
Give me a break.
Arbitration is just another form of using neutral third parties to settle disputes, one that can be less expensive and more practical than resorting to US courts, so these contracts specify that means of settling any disagreements that come up.
It's just a feature of the service AT&T is offering here, and customers can tak
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Why US does this (Score:3)
It's true, US allows private arbitration when many countries don't. It's a by-product of our legal system.
Litigation in the US is both more expensive and more common than in most other countries. It has been designed to be more forgiving, permit broader latitude in developing a case. The idea is to allow greater access to the courts for poor and disadvantaged groups.
US courts allow more discovery (forcing opposing party to turn over documents) than most countries. Some cases are very hard to prove, particularly discrimination cases. So we give plaintiffs ample time and opportunity to compel discovery and uncover documents to prove their case.
Discovery is very expensive. All documents have to be reviewed by attorneys before being handed over, and reviewed by attorneys after they're received. This adds up to many many billable hours.
Further, each party typically pays their own legal costs in the US. In other countries, the loser of the litigation pays all the legal costs. This discourages frivolous litigation. The US system permits and in some ways encourages such behavior.
All this means that litigation is both more costly and more frequent in the US than elsewhere. US companies are tired of dealing with frivolous litigation and "nuisance suits", designed to get a quick payout settlement. Companies use the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) to alleviate these problems by "opting out" of federal courts.
That's not how it was supposed to be. The FAA was originally intended as a way for businesses to resolve disputes among themselves more quickly and cheaply with arbitration, since the federal courts are clogged as a result of permissive litigation rules. It was never meant to be a weapon for companies to immunize themselves against suits from their customers.
But that's why we have arbitration in the US when many other countries wouldn't stand for it. Frankly they never needed it, because litigation is less frequent, less expensive, and the loser usually pays the entire cost. Hooray for freedom. :/
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Re:Notice that the only Senators are Democrats (Score:5, Insightful)
Rule of acquisition 17: A contract is a contract is a contract... but only between Ferengi.
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I don't defend Republicans. I may defend something a Republican does. And I may play devil's advocate to twist your panties around your penis.
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Funny thing is that out of their top 10 political donations, AT&T donated to 2 political candidates directly. They gave over $300,000 to Hillary and almost $80,000 to Bernie.
After that, it looks like they donated to every campaign in the country.
https://www.opensecrets.org/or... [opensecrets.org]
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It's deluded to think that Democrat politicians and their own 1% patrons give two shits about this stuff. It's just another set of fat cats with a different financial agenda pulling the strings.
Re: Tell me, AT&T... (Score:4, Interesting)
The true option is to go to court anyway, most small claims courts will not allow those clauses to stand, you can't sign away your state's right to control commerce, you don't have that sort of authority.
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Few civil court judges are willing to overrule federal law and the US Supreme Court ruling that the federal law overruled more local, plaintiff friendly policies. Examine the Federal Arbitration Act. It may not apply in many cases, but deciding when it does and does not prevent a company from forcing arbitration is one of those legal questions that costs hours of expensive lawyer time to decide before even proceeding to court.
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Yes, even in the US this is absolutely true, also unilateral contracts (one where all terms are set by a single party like an eula or a conditions of sale contract) are seen very different from a bilateral contracts and do not have anywhere near the same enforcement value.
The courts frequently strike down such arbitration clauses as such clauses are direct unilateral violation of rights in a given jurisdiction.
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There, FTFY.
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And in any decent legal system, such clauses are meaningless.
You cannot waive your statutory legal or consumer rights, and claiming that just because people could have "not bought from us" means they can never take you to court is ludicrous on the face of it.
Unfortunately, some countries just haven't yet caught on.
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And, whaddayaknow, that's pretty much the argument progressives make for business taxes.
But I'm sure AT&T is happy to make their arbitration clauses optional if the government makes their taxes optional. How about it?
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How does one go about reading bad reviews of Internet access without Internet access? And if all providers of Internet access in a particular city have bad reviews, under what conditions is that worth moving to a different city?
Re: Right to the internet access (Score:2)
The main problem now is that line-leasing only works for slow (~3mbps or less) ADSL. VDSL2 only gets 10+mbps speeds under a half mile or so, and 50mbps+ maxes out around 500-1200 feet. So with VDSL2, meaningful competition in single-family areas would require having the LEC provide local loop to its remote DSLAM, then VPN the traffic of other companies to some more-distant exchange point for hand-off to the other ISP. Which I believe is how it's done in Britain & many other parts of the world.