[koolba]

Has any state attempted to ban arbitration clauses via popular vote/referendum? If so, would that even hold up in court and across state lines?

Seems like the only way to deal with this crap as there's no incentive for corporations not to force customers into binding arbitration. If I was still running a large consumer focused corporation I'd insist on it as well.

[Natsu]

Why ban it? Just make it so that when it's person vs. company, the person can choose the arbiter. Then they can't shop for a biased arbiter.

[koolba]

> Why ban it?

Because it prevents creating a class action to group together impacted customers. Individually it may not be worth it for a customer to proceed with a claim. En masse, there is an economy of scale.

Now I'm not in favor of frivolous lawsuits and these clauses are clearly intended as a defend against them, but if the response to that problem shouldn't be binding arbitration everywhere. It should be tort reform.

[Natsu]

Yes, it might prevent class action, but if that many people have truly been harmed, the company will have a massive number of arbitration suits to handle which could be more expensive. So they still can't just go around and piss off large numbers of customers.

Half the things I've gotten pitiful $5 checks for were not at all in my interests and one, namely the Microsoft class-actions, I was tried but failed to figure out how to object to because of how badly the lawyers in this state sold the class out in what they settled for.

So I'm not convinced that many of the class actions were actually in the interests of the class members to begin with. I'd honestly prefer to bring my own cases to court than have some self-appointed class representative sell me out.