I live in the UK and I've never come across any company that does shitty stuff like this. Is there some EU law we've still got that explicitly prevents this?
Yes, there's an EU directive which broadly considers arbitration clauses unfair in consumer contracts, and declares that unfair clauses in consumer contracts must be considered nonbinding in law - https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE...
(The basic relevant articles in the directive are Article 3, Article 6 and the Annex here.)
Indeed. At least for now, this is the law in the UK as well... EU directives have to be implemented into national law by member states, and this one is old enough that the UK actually implemented it.
Now that the UK left the EU, and given the "conservative" (i.e. neo-con, market-liberal) government, I wonder if the UK laws concerning this kind of consumer protection will get watered down (or already have been).
> Under EU law, standard contract terms must not:
> * be contrary to the requirement of good faith;
> * disadvantage consumers (in terms of rights & obligations), in relation to sellers/suppliers.
There might be a more specialized law/regulation though. The EU is pretty bad with their public relations stuff so it's hard to tell.
(The basic relevant articles in the directive are Article 3, Article 6 and the Annex here.)