It will cost you more than the nominal fee Microsoft is able to charge for this service.

What you won’t find is someone willing to be sued by a court system which is pathologically biased in favor of the plantiffs without a premium.

So, basically, you want something for nothing.

This, like most of your arguments, is factually false. See, e.g., NAF Code of Procedure Rule 21, requiring arbitrators to be jointly selected.

In the words of Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “You’re entitled to your own opinion, but you’re not entitled to your own facts.”

A bagel is a type of donut – no one calls them donuts. If you tell someone a contract has a forum selection clause, the first thing that comes to mind is venue and choice of law – if you want to be clear, you call it an arbitration clause, and that’s how it is generally discussed (where I’ve seen it) – but in any case, what you call it is not particularly relevant.

I’m not aware of any arbitration agreements that require the arbitrator to be “friendly to the corporation who writes the contract.” That’s simply fictional. As we’ve documented on Overlawyered, consumers do better in arbitration agreements than they do in court.

An arbitration clause is a type of forum-selection clause. Look it up. Black’s Law Dictionary 665 (7th ed. 1999).

An arbitration clause essentially means that you aren’t ever allowed to get to court. (And basically is unappealable in court). The contracts not only preclude court, but they select who gets to decide disputes, someone typically friendly to the corporation who writes the contract, and someone who is a private citizen, not part of the judicial branch.

As I said before, there is nothing wrong with this when both parties freely negotiate for it. And it isn’t just another clause like price or even forum selection – it goes beyond that, because it takes the whole contract out of the realm of contract law enforcement in court and puts it in the hands of a private dispute-resolution organization. An organization that likely owes its business to large corporations (and thus owes its existence to them as well) – how quickly do you think that the company would be dropped as an arbitrator if they kept resolving disputes in consumer’s favor?

I agree with you generally, that people should be free to contract and that includes any adhesion terms you want to put in there – but I think this is something that goes beyond a regular term because it isn’t just about what the parties agree to, it is about who gets to decide when one party of the other is cheating or breaking the agreement – and it simply is beyond the pale to let one party decide that in advance, to its own advantage, with no negotiation.

When a communications installs a fiber optic connection into a home it is making a substantial bet, the cost of installation, that the consumer will amortize that investment over time. Some companies impose termination fees to mitigate their risks. Guess what, there is a guy on TV claiming his communications service is better because there are no termination fees. The market works pretty well and we must be cautious when we tamper with it. Credit card companies cannot impose base fees, which are required by conventional accounting principles, because they lose in the market.

Consumerism, in general, taxes consumers to provide a better chance for some to game the system or to pay for somebodies hobby horse. Air bags are the classic example of the latter.

we are talking about a term that actually causes a party to surrender all of its ordinary legal rights to enforce contract disputes.

That’s absolutely false. No mandatory binding arbitration clause causes a party to “surrender all of its ordinary legal rights to enforce contract disputes.” It’s simply a forum-selection clause.

6. Burchfiel is quoting the Good Morning America story, which got it wrong.

Page 26 of the Public Citizen report indicates that the arbitration judgment was against the correct Anastasia:

“Meanwhile, in June 2005, NAF arbitrator Steven Bromberg issued an award of $11,214.33 in favor of National Credit and against Christopher S. Propper and Anastasia Komarova of Long Beach.”

Again, this has nothing to do with the arbitration. It has to do with a debt collector going after the wrong person, even after the bank told them that they had the wrong person. At no point did Anastasiya Komarova participate in an arbitration. Arbitration could be abolished, and it wouldn’t affect what happened to Ms. Komarova.

Sorry Ted, but I cannot find anything that substantiates this.

From the Nathan Burchfiel article that is linked from the post:
“Anastasiya Komarova, a Russian immigrant, was harassed by collection agencies for $11,000 owed to a company whose card she didn’t even have, Avila said.

“But when the case went to arbitration, not court, private arbitration, none of that mattered,” he reported. “She lost because no matter how absurd the case, credit card companies rarely lose in the private hearings the small print in your contract insists upon, hearings arranged by, guess who: the credit card companies.”

She lost the case in arbitration – but eventually cleared her name in a public court, Avila later said.”

Secondly, the website of the firm that sued on behalf of Anastasiya Komarova also say that she went through a “spurious arbitration hearing.”

When that process failed her, she then went to court to clear her name and the “debt.”

It seems clear that Anastasiya Komarova lost in an arbitration hearing that was neither of her own making, nor should she have even been a party to it.

The incident should not condemn the entire arbitration forum, but neither it is a shining example of how the system works in a fair and impartial manner.