14 ms·

Amazon.com's Conditions of Use – Disputes now resolved by the courts

256 points by TroisM 5y ago

Brendinooo 5y ago
> We each waive any right to a jury trial Is this a common thing to put into terms?
- genericone 5y ago
  When a jury ruled that Monsanto "caused" cancer, companies across the USA shuddered at the lunacy of the nonscientific verdict, and vowed never to allow a jury to rule on such decisions ever again. Prevents those "lets stick it to that big company" decisions too.
  - dheera 5y ago
    Can anything good come of a jury? Considering how badly they disrespect peoples' time and pandemic safety in scheduling jury duty, most educated, busy, and capable people would want to get out of it, leaving very likely a bunch of less-educated people and anti-vaxxers to be on the jury.
    - bawolff 5y ago
      If you trust people like "you" more than the "state" to decide what your fate is. The modern state with mostly impartial judiciary seems pretty good right now, but i imagine that wasn't true in various times and places. Jury nullification is also an interesting practise (see for example abortion in canada)
      - TheRealPomax 5y ago
        Which modern state? Macedonia? Russia? The US? Finland? I'd trust exactly one of those four.
        bawolff 5y ago
        I meant america, or another "western" country like canada or the uk.
        aaomidi 5y ago
        Impartial judiciary? This is news to me.
        kmonsen 5y ago
        Have you seen our (USA) supreme court? Calling them impartial is taking it a bit far I would say.
        kube-system 5y ago
        Have you seen courts in other countries? SCOTUS does a pretty good job. Even justices that I don’t like write logically consistent and sound arguments, and we have very recent evidence to show that they hold their ideals above favoritism. Don’t mistake SCOTUS justices’ philosophical differences as partiality.
        TheRealPomax 5y ago
        I'd so much rather my case be heard by a group of qualified judges (that's right, group. Your case is heard by three judges, to make sure no one judge gets to manipulate a case on a whim) who got their job because they were appointed based on their career track, rather than because they were elected by an electorate who hasn't the slightest idea how insane that is. (lawyers need to be bar-qualified, but judges amazingly need zero qualification. Wtf, US?) And that's before we actually look at the reliability of a jury trial: the letter of the law might claim it's a jury of peers, but that's never the case from the outset, and then lawyers get to demand that the only people who might actually do any reasonable thinking get replaced if they know a reasonable thinking person would conclude their client's guilty. The system is so messed up, you could write multiple books about it. Which people have.
        bawolff 5y ago
    - bunfunton 5y ago
      Yeah. A National hero / amazing community member gets busted growing some weed. The charge is 10 years in prison. I sure hope there’s a jury so they can throw it out / nullify out
      - jdavis703 5y ago
        No one is charged with a set amount of jail time. They’re charged with specific crimes which may have mandatory minimums (assuming the jury convicts on all charges).
    - nathanvanfleet 5y ago
      You alright?
  - hanniabu 5y ago
    Well the thing is that there's a high likeliness that monsanto did cause cancer, but it's impossible to prove it 100%.
    - andromeduck 5y ago
      Impossible to prove it 10% too.
      - TheRealPomax 5y ago
        10% is trivial to prove, it's just not enough for a conviction in any sane court.
    - beervirus 5y ago
      Preponderance of the evidence (more likely than not) is the usual burden in civil claims.
  - josefx 5y ago
    > When a jury ruled that Monsanto "caused" cancer Did they actually use those words? As far as I remember they convicted Monsanto mostly on messing with the "independent" studies that should have confirmed their weed killers safety, using various "friends" in key positions to shut down any study that went out of line before it could go anywhere. All documented in an internal email chain discussing various means in great detail. > shuddered at the lunacy of the nonscientific verdict, Science went out of the window the moment Monsanto started to actively taint the research through political means.
    - bluGill 5y ago
      They ruled in one case that roundup caused a particular person's cancer. Even though medically 80% of cases of that type of cancer do not have an environmental cause (ie random mutation is responsible for 80% of cases).
      - josefx 5y ago
        So every fifth case has an environmental cause and Monsanto got caught pants down actively interfering with the legally required process^1 that was used to certify their weed killers as not being a environmental hazard, including being a cause for cancer. ^1 The results of independent studies are supposed to act as basis for government approval.
    - LatteLazy 5y ago
      (not OP) https://apnews.com/article/courts-health-cancer-government-and-politics-a9c4eb00d40988bddd7c936dd7f388ae https://apnews.com/article/courts-health-cancer-government-a...
- banana_giraffe 5y ago
  Depends on your definition of "common". It is becoming more and more prevalent [1]. I've only seen it in print once, but then again, I'm not in a situation to sign contracts like that often. I refused, since I can't imagine a scenario where it benefits me. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB109269232752592826 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB109269232752592826
  - DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
    What if you tell them that you’ll sign it provided that you get to pick the judge?
    - hedora 5y ago
      What happens if I add a “terms of business relationships addendum” to my facebook account (or homepage) that claims to override various clauses in all terms of service I’ve agreed to? I’m serious. If the expectation is that I can be bothered to check for updates to 1000’s of terms of service every morning, why shouldn’t they be expected to hire someone to check personal homepages and social media accounts for such things? “Last writer wins” in US contract law (roughly speaking, IANAL), and I’m reasonably sure I can establish that my addendum “happens after” company terms of service updates. I’m happy to agree to binding arbitration, or flying to Washington to have a (corrupt?) judge or whatever process my complaint for a meagre $10,000 per hour (plus expenses) for the duration of the dispute. Edit: payable up front, regardless of the outcome of the dispute.
      - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
        I mean, if you're serious, the answer is that Facebook didn't claim to have read your terms of service addendum, but you did say you read theirs, when you signed up. I do agree with the sentiment though. IMO, if one party to a contract cannot have a reasonable expectation (!) that the contract was read by the other party, the contract should be considered invalid.
        Vespasian 5y ago
- nkozyra 5y ago
  Fairly common in civil contacts (pre-nups, acqui-hires, partnerships, etc) As i understand it, in many states it does not preclude a jury trial, but serves as a gate for the trial ... should mediation fail, a jury trial will still happen.
  - dd36 5y ago
    It’s common in consumer contracts. It’s a Federal law that supersedes state law: The Federal Arbitration Act. It always precludes state law. Indeed, precedence is that issues of arbitrability are for arbitrators to decide.
    - jcranmer 5y ago
      Waiving a jury trial is not the same as demanding arbitration. It means that you consent to bench trial (rule by judge alone) instead.
      - dd36 5y ago
        I misread the chain.
- killingtime74 5y ago
  Depends on country. Very few civil trials involve juries in Australia for example
medmunds 5y ago
Earlier discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27356550 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27356550
- floatingatoll 5y ago
  (For site context on why this is coming up today, Amazon is emailing their customer base today to notify them of this specific change to their legal terms.)
  - TroisM 5y ago
    that's how I found out...
tyingq 5y ago
"The retail giant made the change after plaintiffs’ lawyers flooded Amazon with more than 75,000 individual arbitration demands on behalf of Echo users. That move triggered a bill for tens of millions of dollars in filing fees, according to lawyers involved, payable by Amazon under its own policies." https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-faced-75-000-arbitration-demands-now-it-says-fine-sue-us-11622547000 https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-faced-75-000-arbitration...
- hoppyhoppy2 5y ago
  The New York Times also covered this trend: >‘Scared to Death’ by Arbitration: Companies Drowning in Their Own System https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/business/arbitration-overload.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/business/arbitration-over... or https://web.archive.org/web/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/business/arbitration-overload.html https://web.archive.org/web/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/...
  - thefourthchime 5y ago
    It was a very clever move. Well done!
  - LimaBearz 5y ago
    I believe their podcast “The Daily” also had an episode on it, even got the original lawyer that discovered the trick. It’s a pretty good podcast for those who may not know about it
    - andrei_says_ 5y ago
      Do you know which episode?
      - LimaBearz 5y ago
        I wasn’t close. https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/the-journal/why-suing-amazon-just-got-easier/1b5b9ca0-620c-40f0-b894-a50ca6638aa1 https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/the-journal/why-suing-amazon-ju... Different podcast but that’s the episode. The Daily is still good.. the one linked above is good as well
Causality1 5y ago
What the hell is the point of having rights when someone can coerce you into signing them away?
- mtnGoat 5y ago
  you dont have to deal with them if you dont want to. i do not see the coercion.
  - d110af5ccf 5y ago
    Ah yes, just don't participate in society if I wish to retain my "rights". Why didn't I think of that?! That being said, rights are being restored in this case (ie things are heading back to the courts) so GP seems a bit off base to me in context.
    - beart 5y ago
      "rights are being restored" feels wrong in this context. "A corporation has determined its more profitable to let you sue them" seems more accurate.
  - rtkwe 5y ago
    Pretty much every contract with a large company has a similar clause in it where they require you to go to arbitration instead of through the courts for disputes. This site requires binding arbitration in it's TOS, to avoid it you basically cannot use any service that's not open source and self hosted. No power, internet, cable, etc either those also definitely have BA clauses, it's impossible to live in modern society without agreeing to it because everyone requires it.
    - mtnGoat 5y ago
      True, but in this case I was specifically referring to Amazon, which you can pretty easily live without ordering on. I have family that doesn’t have internet, never have and are doing fine. It’s quite possible. Just because you can’t handle it, doesn’t make it not possible.
nikkwong 5y ago
Maybe silly question and probably OT but do sellers have any rights to sell on Amazon's platform? I had been selling for years and seem to have some benign error which has caused my seller account to be deactivated (Yes literally a benign error, I think it's because I accidentally used my personal email (rather than business email which was my main seller account) to register a seperate seller account years ago and according to Seller TOS you can't have two accounts—so even though I never used the accidental account, I still got deactivated). Further, Amazon has an appeal system for exactly this offense but for whatever reason they never respond to my inquiries. I've appealed everywhere I could, emailed jeff@amazon, but never get a response from anyone anymore; probably for being so annoying on the issue. Do sellers have any rights? For the record this has basically ruined my business. I started selling online (on my own site) in 2015 and started selling on Amazon in around 2017 and around the time of the pandemic basically all of my sales volume shifted from my website to almost all of it on Amazon. What they've done here is great for consumers; but now they control the rails and people aren't doing as much ecommerce shopping if outside of Amazon's walls. Obviously they have done nothing illegal by destroying my livelihood like this, but, it feels weird to have no recourse for a violation that has impacted my life so deeply. I wouldn't even ponder the idea of bringing the law in to help remediate my situation here but wonder if anyone may have any thoughts as to otherwise.
- AKSucks 5y ago
  After appealing and not getting a reply, did you contact them via web chat or phone and ask about the status, and request that things be escalated?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - nikkwong 5y ago
    Yeah. I often call them actually. It's nice to finally be able to get someone on the phone, but they're really unhelpful unfortunately, even when asking to escalate. The general answer is "the team that handles these matters is a black box and we can't contact them; we can't write to them; we can't walk to their desks; we have no way of communicating with them". Apparently the only way to get in touch with this team who's banned my account is through a form that they don't respond to. The people on the phone are nice; I beg, bribe, offer to send chocolates; but their response is always the same. They really seem to have no way of contacting this team. The only other avenue is the jeff@amazon outlet which doesn't respond to my emails. I've emailed that address maybe 4 times total about this issue; the first time they did respond and seemed to get me pretty close to resolution; but then stopped responding half way through. The follow up attempts to jeff@amazon after the first stopped receiving replies. Maddening! I can probably count on one hand the number of times I've felt stressed out in my life; but this is one of those rare occasions because I feel so powerless. Wish you could have seen the product I was selling. It had an average of 4.8 star reviews; over 300 which had been submitted. All real customers. I was so proud of that. Thanks for the response though!
warmfuzzykitten 5y ago
"the courts"? More like "in the state or Federal courts in King County, Washington". This probably isn't the equivalent of a patent troll insisting on a trial in East Texas, but they definitely cherry-picked a friendly jurisdiction.
- jkaplowitz 5y ago
  Cherry-picked? That suggests they went out of their way to arbitrarily pick something just because it had the ideal set of judges or laws. It's simpler than that - it's where they're headquartered. Pretty much every contract ever drafted picks the home jurisdiction of the drafting party as the chosen venue (if not arbitration) and chosen law, absent some specific reason to do otherwise. Sure, Amazon is a very big player there, but by no means the only big player (e.g. MS and Boeing are also based there), and all the full procedural and substantive protections of the US and Washington judicial systems apply, aside from the right to a jury. Everything is much more restricted in arbitration.
- LimaBearz 5y ago
  Can you elaborate? Amazon’s headquarters is in King County, it seems perfectly reasonable that they’d fall into their local jurisdiction. How is that cherry picked?
  - da_chicken 5y ago
    Well, you see, the cherry tree grew exactly where it was planted.
- AKSucks 5y ago
  It's not like I have a solution, but with a sufficiently large enough Big Employer Company in a town/city, it all but guarantees a plaintiff against won't get a fair trial when damn near everyone in town or the city is 2 or less degrees of separation from a job at that company. In Boston the city employee to resident ratio was one of the lowest in the nation and while Thomas "Chuckles" Menino cultured an air of being a friendly grandpa patriarch who couldn't keep track of which team name corresponded to which sport...reality was that city workers were an ersatz campaign worker army, infamous for being fiercely loyal, and demanding loyalty from family and neighbors. "Are you voting for Not Menino? Because if you do, I'm gonna lose my job, Bill." There were newspaper stories about families nearly getting into fistfights over this stuff. Menino stepped down, Marty Walsh stepped up (and promptly got involved in some scandals involving his staff pushing for union work on construction sites.) He's been appointed federal secretary of labor, so the deputy mayor suddenly was in charge. This current election cycle seems heavily focused on identity politics, social justice, etc. It's a subject some politicians are more than happy to discuss because it sidesteps how massively wasteful and incompetent the city workforce is; nothing gets done unless you're on good terms with the "neighborhood liaison" or know someone. It's a miracle they manage to even keep their office chair seats warm. When nearby Somerville (which is basically the municipal version of the Italian mob) is more functional, that's not a good look...
qwerty456127 5y ago
I wish juries would decide where do the returned goods go. AFAIK today most of the returned goods go to landfills even if in perfectly good condition.
- adriancr 5y ago
  arent they sold at a discount as used/refurbished?
  - qwerty456127 5y ago
    As another article published here some time ago said - mostly not.
- dannyw 5y ago
  1. Juries are expensive. Is this really what juries are for? 2. Amazon tries to resell any sellable returned goods.
- Vespasian 5y ago
  That sounds more like job for the legislative branch of government (e.g. parliaments).
masondunn 5y ago
Accelerando by Charlie Stross comes to life...
waiwai933 5y ago
> Please note that this message was sent to the following e-mail address: email-qa-blast+testing@amazon.com Anyone else get this at the footer instead of their email address? I have no knowledge of how mail merges work in practice, but it does seem a bit odd.
- AnssiH 5y ago
  Yes, that was there for me as well.
xyzzy21 5y ago
LOL Apparently arbitration became too insanely expensive!
flowerlad 5y ago
Access to courts is a basic right in the civilized world. How did it get taken away in the first place? Mandatory arbitration clauses should be banned. Arbitration clauses are very unfair to consumers, as explained here: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/02/business/dealbook/in-arbitration-a-privatization-of-the-justice-system.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/02/business/dealbook/in-arbi...

256 points by TroisM 5y ago

Brendinooo 5y ago

> We each waive any right to a jury trial Is this a common thing to put into terms?

genericone 5y ago
When a jury ruled that Monsanto "caused" cancer, companies across the USA shuddered at the lunacy of the nonscientific verdict, and vowed never to allow a jury to rule on such decisions ever again. Prevents those "lets stick it to that big company" decisions too.
- dheera 5y ago
  Can anything good come of a jury? Considering how badly they disrespect peoples' time and pandemic safety in scheduling jury duty, most educated, busy, and capable people would want to get out of it, leaving very likely a bunch of less-educated people and anti-vaxxers to be on the jury.
  - bawolff 5y ago
    If you trust people like "you" more than the "state" to decide what your fate is. The modern state with mostly impartial judiciary seems pretty good right now, but i imagine that wasn't true in various times and places. Jury nullification is also an interesting practise (see for example abortion in canada)
    - TheRealPomax 5y ago
      Which modern state? Macedonia? Russia? The US? Finland? I'd trust exactly one of those four.
      - bawolff 5y ago
        I meant america, or another "western" country like canada or the uk.
        aaomidi 5y ago
        Impartial judiciary? This is news to me.
        kmonsen 5y ago
        Have you seen our (USA) supreme court? Calling them impartial is taking it a bit far I would say.
        kube-system 5y ago
        Have you seen courts in other countries? SCOTUS does a pretty good job. Even justices that I don’t like write logically consistent and sound arguments, and we have very recent evidence to show that they hold their ideals above favoritism. Don’t mistake SCOTUS justices’ philosophical differences as partiality.
        TheRealPomax 5y ago
        I'd so much rather my case be heard by a group of qualified judges (that's right, group. Your case is heard by three judges, to make sure no one judge gets to manipulate a case on a whim) who got their job because they were appointed based on their career track, rather than because they were elected by an electorate who hasn't the slightest idea how insane that is. (lawyers need to be bar-qualified, but judges amazingly need zero qualification. Wtf, US?) And that's before we actually look at the reliability of a jury trial: the letter of the law might claim it's a jury of peers, but that's never the case from the outset, and then lawyers get to demand that the only people who might actually do any reasonable thinking get replaced if they know a reasonable thinking person would conclude their client's guilty. The system is so messed up, you could write multiple books about it. Which people have.
        bawolff 5y ago
  - bunfunton 5y ago
    Yeah. A National hero / amazing community member gets busted growing some weed. The charge is 10 years in prison. I sure hope there’s a jury so they can throw it out / nullify out
    - jdavis703 5y ago
      No one is charged with a set amount of jail time. They’re charged with specific crimes which may have mandatory minimums (assuming the jury convicts on all charges).
  - nathanvanfleet 5y ago
    You alright?
- hanniabu 5y ago
  Well the thing is that there's a high likeliness that monsanto did cause cancer, but it's impossible to prove it 100%.
  - andromeduck 5y ago
    Impossible to prove it 10% too.
    - TheRealPomax 5y ago
      10% is trivial to prove, it's just not enough for a conviction in any sane court.
  - beervirus 5y ago
    Preponderance of the evidence (more likely than not) is the usual burden in civil claims.
- josefx 5y ago
  > When a jury ruled that Monsanto "caused" cancer Did they actually use those words? As far as I remember they convicted Monsanto mostly on messing with the "independent" studies that should have confirmed their weed killers safety, using various "friends" in key positions to shut down any study that went out of line before it could go anywhere. All documented in an internal email chain discussing various means in great detail. > shuddered at the lunacy of the nonscientific verdict, Science went out of the window the moment Monsanto started to actively taint the research through political means.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    They ruled in one case that roundup caused a particular person's cancer. Even though medically 80% of cases of that type of cancer do not have an environmental cause (ie random mutation is responsible for 80% of cases).
    - josefx 5y ago
      So every fifth case has an environmental cause and Monsanto got caught pants down actively interfering with the legally required process^1 that was used to certify their weed killers as not being a environmental hazard, including being a cause for cancer. ^1 The results of independent studies are supposed to act as basis for government approval.
  - LatteLazy 5y ago
    (not OP) https://apnews.com/article/courts-health-cancer-government-and-politics-a9c4eb00d40988bddd7c936dd7f388ae https://apnews.com/article/courts-health-cancer-government-a...
banana_giraffe 5y ago
Depends on your definition of "common". It is becoming more and more prevalent [1]. I've only seen it in print once, but then again, I'm not in a situation to sign contracts like that often. I refused, since I can't imagine a scenario where it benefits me. https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB109269232752592826 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB109269232752592826
- DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
  What if you tell them that you’ll sign it provided that you get to pick the judge?
  - hedora 5y ago
    What happens if I add a “terms of business relationships addendum” to my facebook account (or homepage) that claims to override various clauses in all terms of service I’ve agreed to? I’m serious. If the expectation is that I can be bothered to check for updates to 1000’s of terms of service every morning, why shouldn’t they be expected to hire someone to check personal homepages and social media accounts for such things? “Last writer wins” in US contract law (roughly speaking, IANAL), and I’m reasonably sure I can establish that my addendum “happens after” company terms of service updates. I’m happy to agree to binding arbitration, or flying to Washington to have a (corrupt?) judge or whatever process my complaint for a meagre $10,000 per hour (plus expenses) for the duration of the dispute. Edit: payable up front, regardless of the outcome of the dispute.
    - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
      I mean, if you're serious, the answer is that Facebook didn't claim to have read your terms of service addendum, but you did say you read theirs, when you signed up. I do agree with the sentiment though. IMO, if one party to a contract cannot have a reasonable expectation (!) that the contract was read by the other party, the contract should be considered invalid.
      - Vespasian 5y ago
nkozyra 5y ago
Fairly common in civil contacts (pre-nups, acqui-hires, partnerships, etc) As i understand it, in many states it does not preclude a jury trial, but serves as a gate for the trial ... should mediation fail, a jury trial will still happen.
- dd36 5y ago
  It’s common in consumer contracts. It’s a Federal law that supersedes state law: The Federal Arbitration Act. It always precludes state law. Indeed, precedence is that issues of arbitrability are for arbitrators to decide.
  - jcranmer 5y ago
    Waiving a jury trial is not the same as demanding arbitration. It means that you consent to bench trial (rule by judge alone) instead.
    - dd36 5y ago
      I misread the chain.
killingtime74 5y ago
Depends on country. Very few civil trials involve juries in Australia for example

medmunds 5y ago

Earlier discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27356550 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27356550

floatingatoll 5y ago
(For site context on why this is coming up today, Amazon is emailing their customer base today to notify them of this specific change to their legal terms.)
- TroisM 5y ago
  that's how I found out...

tyingq 5y ago

"The retail giant made the change after plaintiffs’ lawyers flooded Amazon with more than 75,000 individual arbitration demands on behalf of Echo users. That move triggered a bill for tens of millions of dollars in filing fees, according to lawyers involved, payable by Amazon under its own policies." https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-faced-75-000-arbitration-demands-now-it-says-fine-sue-us-11622547000 https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-faced-75-000-arbitration...

hoppyhoppy2 5y ago
The New York Times also covered this trend: >‘Scared to Death’ by Arbitration: Companies Drowning in Their Own System https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/business/arbitration-overload.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/business/arbitration-over... or https://web.archive.org/web/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/business/arbitration-overload.html https://web.archive.org/web/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/...
- thefourthchime 5y ago
  It was a very clever move. Well done!
- LimaBearz 5y ago
  I believe their podcast “The Daily” also had an episode on it, even got the original lawyer that discovered the trick. It’s a pretty good podcast for those who may not know about it
  - andrei_says_ 5y ago
    Do you know which episode?
    - LimaBearz 5y ago
      I wasn’t close. https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/the-journal/why-suing-amazon-just-got-easier/1b5b9ca0-620c-40f0-b894-a50ca6638aa1 https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/the-journal/why-suing-amazon-ju... Different podcast but that’s the episode. The Daily is still good.. the one linked above is good as well

Causality1 5y ago

What the hell is the point of having rights when someone can coerce you into signing them away?

mtnGoat 5y ago
you dont have to deal with them if you dont want to. i do not see the coercion.
- d110af5ccf 5y ago
  Ah yes, just don't participate in society if I wish to retain my "rights". Why didn't I think of that?! That being said, rights are being restored in this case (ie things are heading back to the courts) so GP seems a bit off base to me in context.
  - beart 5y ago
    "rights are being restored" feels wrong in this context. "A corporation has determined its more profitable to let you sue them" seems more accurate.
- rtkwe 5y ago
  Pretty much every contract with a large company has a similar clause in it where they require you to go to arbitration instead of through the courts for disputes. This site requires binding arbitration in it's TOS, to avoid it you basically cannot use any service that's not open source and self hosted. No power, internet, cable, etc either those also definitely have BA clauses, it's impossible to live in modern society without agreeing to it because everyone requires it.
  - mtnGoat 5y ago
    True, but in this case I was specifically referring to Amazon, which you can pretty easily live without ordering on. I have family that doesn’t have internet, never have and are doing fine. It’s quite possible. Just because you can’t handle it, doesn’t make it not possible.

nikkwong 5y ago

Maybe silly question and probably OT but do sellers have any rights to sell on Amazon's platform? I had been selling for years and seem to have some benign error which has caused my seller account to be deactivated (Yes literally a benign error, I think it's because I accidentally used my personal email (rather than business email which was my main seller account) to register a seperate seller account years ago and according to Seller TOS you can't have two accounts—so even though I never used the accidental account, I still got deactivated). Further, Amazon has an appeal system for exactly this offense but for whatever reason they never respond to my inquiries. I've appealed everywhere I could, emailed jeff@amazon, but never get a response from anyone anymore; probably for being so annoying on the issue. Do sellers have any rights? For the record this has basically ruined my business. I started selling online (on my own site) in 2015 and started selling on Amazon in around 2017 and around the time of the pandemic basically all of my sales volume shifted from my website to almost all of it on Amazon. What they've done here is great for consumers; but now they control the rails and people aren't doing as much ecommerce shopping if outside of Amazon's walls. Obviously they have done nothing illegal by destroying my livelihood like this, but, it feels weird to have no recourse for a violation that has impacted my life so deeply. I wouldn't even ponder the idea of bringing the law in to help remediate my situation here but wonder if anyone may have any thoughts as to otherwise.

AKSucks 5y ago
After appealing and not getting a reply, did you contact them via web chat or phone and ask about the status, and request that things be escalated?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- nikkwong 5y ago
  Yeah. I often call them actually. It's nice to finally be able to get someone on the phone, but they're really unhelpful unfortunately, even when asking to escalate. The general answer is "the team that handles these matters is a black box and we can't contact them; we can't write to them; we can't walk to their desks; we have no way of communicating with them". Apparently the only way to get in touch with this team who's banned my account is through a form that they don't respond to. The people on the phone are nice; I beg, bribe, offer to send chocolates; but their response is always the same. They really seem to have no way of contacting this team. The only other avenue is the jeff@amazon outlet which doesn't respond to my emails. I've emailed that address maybe 4 times total about this issue; the first time they did respond and seemed to get me pretty close to resolution; but then stopped responding half way through. The follow up attempts to jeff@amazon after the first stopped receiving replies. Maddening! I can probably count on one hand the number of times I've felt stressed out in my life; but this is one of those rare occasions because I feel so powerless. Wish you could have seen the product I was selling. It had an average of 4.8 star reviews; over 300 which had been submitted. All real customers. I was so proud of that. Thanks for the response though!

warmfuzzykitten 5y ago

"the courts"? More like "in the state or Federal courts in King County, Washington". This probably isn't the equivalent of a patent troll insisting on a trial in East Texas, but they definitely cherry-picked a friendly jurisdiction.

jkaplowitz 5y ago
Cherry-picked? That suggests they went out of their way to arbitrarily pick something just because it had the ideal set of judges or laws. It's simpler than that - it's where they're headquartered. Pretty much every contract ever drafted picks the home jurisdiction of the drafting party as the chosen venue (if not arbitration) and chosen law, absent some specific reason to do otherwise. Sure, Amazon is a very big player there, but by no means the only big player (e.g. MS and Boeing are also based there), and all the full procedural and substantive protections of the US and Washington judicial systems apply, aside from the right to a jury. Everything is much more restricted in arbitration.
LimaBearz 5y ago
Can you elaborate? Amazon’s headquarters is in King County, it seems perfectly reasonable that they’d fall into their local jurisdiction. How is that cherry picked?
- da_chicken 5y ago
  Well, you see, the cherry tree grew exactly where it was planted.
AKSucks 5y ago
It's not like I have a solution, but with a sufficiently large enough Big Employer Company in a town/city, it all but guarantees a plaintiff against won't get a fair trial when damn near everyone in town or the city is 2 or less degrees of separation from a job at that company. In Boston the city employee to resident ratio was one of the lowest in the nation and while Thomas "Chuckles" Menino cultured an air of being a friendly grandpa patriarch who couldn't keep track of which team name corresponded to which sport...reality was that city workers were an ersatz campaign worker army, infamous for being fiercely loyal, and demanding loyalty from family and neighbors. "Are you voting for Not Menino? Because if you do, I'm gonna lose my job, Bill." There were newspaper stories about families nearly getting into fistfights over this stuff. Menino stepped down, Marty Walsh stepped up (and promptly got involved in some scandals involving his staff pushing for union work on construction sites.) He's been appointed federal secretary of labor, so the deputy mayor suddenly was in charge. This current election cycle seems heavily focused on identity politics, social justice, etc. It's a subject some politicians are more than happy to discuss because it sidesteps how massively wasteful and incompetent the city workforce is; nothing gets done unless you're on good terms with the "neighborhood liaison" or know someone. It's a miracle they manage to even keep their office chair seats warm. When nearby Somerville (which is basically the municipal version of the Italian mob) is more functional, that's not a good look...

qwerty456127 5y ago

I wish juries would decide where do the returned goods go. AFAIK today most of the returned goods go to landfills even if in perfectly good condition.

adriancr 5y ago
arent they sold at a discount as used/refurbished?
- qwerty456127 5y ago
  As another article published here some time ago said - mostly not.
dannyw 5y ago
1. Juries are expensive. Is this really what juries are for? 2. Amazon tries to resell any sellable returned goods.
Vespasian 5y ago
That sounds more like job for the legislative branch of government (e.g. parliaments).

masondunn 5y ago

Accelerando by Charlie Stross comes to life...

waiwai933 5y ago

> Please note that this message was sent to the following e-mail address: email-qa-blast+testing@amazon.com Anyone else get this at the footer instead of their email address? I have no knowledge of how mail merges work in practice, but it does seem a bit odd.

AnssiH 5y ago
Yes, that was there for me as well.

xyzzy21 5y ago

LOL Apparently arbitration became too insanely expensive!

flowerlad 5y ago

Access to courts is a basic right in the civilized world. How did it get taken away in the first place? Mandatory arbitration clauses should be banned. Arbitration clauses are very unfair to consumers, as explained here: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/02/business/dealbook/in-arbitration-a-privatization-of-the-justice-system.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/02/business/dealbook/in-arbi...