| > a bit of topic, but what is arbitration and why is it bad? We don't have it here in Europe (or at least is not very diffused). You have plenty of arbitration in the EU. It involves a "third party" (supposedly outside of the control of either party involved) which resolves the dispute between the two parties according to the law en possibly some other set of rules which both parties agreed to before entering into a contract. This avoids going to the judiciary and is usually a lot cheaper for the customer as well as the loser of the proceedings. The disadvantage is, that in some cases the use of such arbitration voids legal (civil) cases to be made (e.g. agree to arbitrage, you cannot sue). Some arbitration is set up by law (enacted by law), some is set up by special interest groups to avoid differences between companies within the same line of work and some are set up by companies themselves. In the EU it is mostly the first two. My personal opinion is to avoid them like the plague unless you have no way to go to court (e.g. no money) as they rarely have solid arguments and rule in favor of the companies way more often than not.
As far as I am aware you are always allowed to reject arbitration in the EU and go to court, though that might be more difficult and expensive and not always wise. Contact a lawyer beforehand would be my advise, most EU countries have some form of basic (free/cheap) legal assistance. See https://ec.europa.eu/info/live-work-travel-eu/consumers/reso... for instance edit: list of all commissions is here and https://ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr/main/?event=main.adr.show... and is about 450 items long edit2: As far as I know, force arbitration is generally considered "unfair" but this differs per country and might not be applicable in all circumstances. Some explanation: https://www.hausfeld.com/news-press/mandatory-arbitration-in... |