Slashdot Mirror
AT&T Uses Forced Arbitration To Overcharge Customers, Senators Say (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Five Democratic US senators allege that AT&T's use of forced arbitration clauses has helped the company charge higher prices than the ones it advertises to customers. The senators pointed to a CBS News investigation that described "more than 4,000 complaints against AT&T and [subsidiary] DirecTV related to deals, promotions and overcharging in the past two years." But customers have little recourse because they are forced to settle disputes with AT&T in arbitration, according to Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), and Edward Markey (D-Mass.). "Forced arbitration provisions in telecommunications contracts erode Americans' ability to seek justice in the courts by forcing them into a privatized system that is inherently biased in favor of providers and which offers virtually no way to challenge a biased outcome," the senators wrote in a letter yesterday to AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson. "Forced arbitration requires consumers to sign away their constitutional right to hold providers accountable in court just to access modern-day essentials like mobile phone, Internet, and pay-TV services." Forced arbitration provisions such as AT&T's also "include a class action waiver; language which strips consumers of the right to band together with other consumers to challenge a provider's widespread wrongdoing," they wrote.
It's not a Republican concept. It's a freedom concept. People are free to make their own decisions.
Every purchase is a sale. Every sale is a purchase. Economic transactions are symmetric that way. You are exchanging money for satellite TV service. DirecTV is exchanging satellite TV service for money. They are free to set the terms under which they'll agree to pay you (with service). You are free to set the terms under which you'll agree to pay them (with money). If both of you can come to equitable terms, then the trade happens. If you can't agree, then no trade happens.
If you don't like the arbitration clause, it's real simple - don't agree to it. Tell them you won't be buying their service because they insist on arbitration, and walk away. Find someone selling a similar product who doesn't require arbitration. If every seller requires arbitration, then perhaps you should investigate why they're all requiring arbitration, instead of immediately making the knee-jerk reaction of prohibiting it because you don't like it. If "half of the population in the business ownership 'club'" is requiring arbitration, there's probably a good reason for it.
Only Democrats were fighting this because taking away people's freedom under the guise of "the government knows better" is an anathema to Republican principles. Republicans believe in letting people make their own decisions, so the bad ideas die (because fewer people agree to them) while the better ideas flourish. They don't even claim to know which are the bad or good ideas - they just believe in your right to discover them for yourself.
Remember, this isn't a court which concluded that AT&T used arbitration to overcharge customers. This is a group of Senators claiming it. (I'd actually agree with them when it comes to cable and Internet service. Those are frequently government-granted monopolies in this country so you don't have the ability to walk away from deals you don't like - there are no other sellers because the government has prohibited them. But satellite TV and mobile phone services have competitors you can go to if you don't like the terms offered.) The one area I'd agree with them is that DirecTV's advertising is deceptive. Those $50/mo offers are introductory prices, and after the first year the price jumps up to the regular price which is buried in the fine print and difficult to find. My cable company OTOH advertised the regular price directly underneath the introductory price - in a smaller non-bold font, but very easy to see so I knew quickly and exactly what I was getting into. But that falls under the jurisdiction of the FTC, not class action lawsuits.