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Canadian Court Sides With Dell Against Class Actions
An anonymous reader writes "Michael Geist reports that the Supreme Court of Canada has just issued a new online contracting decision that removes the ability for consumers to challenge mandatory arbitration clauses found in e-commerce contracts. (Decision is here.) The case involved a lawsuit against Dell Computer, which refused to sell hundreds of mistakenly priced computers purchased on their website. Dell tried to sidetrack a class action by claiming that all consumers were required to enter arbitration due to a clause buried in its contract via a hyperlink. Geist explains why the ruling may not be as unfavorable for Canadian consumers as it seems at first, in part because some provinces have already passed laws banning e-commerce sites from blocking class-action suits."
It was the autumn of 2004 and hundreds of people were claiming, that, if Bush wins again, they'll move to Canada...
It is now the summer of 2007, and Mr. Dawson — who, apparently, decided to stick around back then — is busy trying to turn /. into some sort of DailyKos. Fair enough — he believes in it, so he fights for it.
But recently his postings were all about Canada turning less and less appealing to his kind. So, where is he going to move, if a Republican wins again next year? Or, if he is a Canadian, where will he go, if Canada continues to align its laws with America's?
This post is not entirely off-topic, really — many of the articles posted by Mr. Dawson are so obviously (left-)biased, the editor's persona becomes a fair part of the topic. Plus, with tags like "republicansarenazis" used by this guy just a week or so ago, no on-topic discussion is really warranted — by Godwin's Law, at least...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the standard of what's referred to as "unconscionable" in Canada is lower than in the US.
IIRC (and IANAL here) but the Ontario court said basically said for "contracts of adhesion", (i.e., contracts like this where they know nobody reads it all) that, in order for a contract/clause to be enforceable, the test is, "if they had read it, is it reasonable to assume that this customer would've accepted it?".
So, it's a lesser hurdle to get over than "unconscionable = contract that no reasonable person would accept".
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
Actually to be fair, in canada we have something called the consumer protection act that has this wonderful clause that companies are obligated to correct billing errors brought to their attention during the 90 days following the invoice date.
Note: BROUGHT TO THEIR ATTENTION DURING THE 90 DAYS
This is why service providers here in canada try to keep people in the run around as much as possible as once its over 90 days, they do not HAVE TO DO A BLOODY THING....even if it was incorrect.
Now one thing i do NOT know is how much case law is out there that contests this, but i know for a fact a certain cellphone provider here banks on this as their margin inflator.
Ice Cream has no bones.
In Australia, stores are bound by law to give the customer the lowest price.
If they print it wrong on in a magazine or on the net then its the stores fault and the customer gets the cheaper price.
People are both too stupid and too greedy for this to ever work; if you have ever worked in any kind of customer complaints department you would know this.
I'm sorry but as for terms of sale, anything beyond 'I give you cash, you give me a machine' is complete and utter bullshit.I for one am quite happy that many of the more expensive items I have bought came with warranties. I take it you have never had anything break down outside of the return period.
Oh and that arbitration thing, its so that they cant get class action lawsuits against them for shit like say... oh I dont know... say an exploding dell laptop.Man, you either have a horrible memory, or just like to twist everything into anti-Dell. The exploding batteries were made by Sony, and practically every laptop manufacturer on the planet had units out there with them. Dell was the first one to recall the batteries. Bad press for them at the time, but in retrospect more responsible than the companies that waited much, much longer to recall them.