It's at least fairly on the side of "only trying to avoid class actions" by having:
- "arbitrator provided by the American Arbitration Association"
- "[individuals] may elect to pursue their claims in their local small-claims court rather than through arbitration"
- arbitration care heard in your local county
- they pay for the arbitration fees
It's the same as online game store companies having binding arbitration, there are some cases where class actions would be detrimental to a company due to no fault of the company themselves.
Privacy.com can ban class actions without binding arbitration agreements, many companies already do this.
To go a step farther, waiving my right to a trial by jury and telling me I can go to a small claims court instead does not engender trust from me. That's not avoiding a class action, that's removing my ability to have a trial decided by my peers.
To go even one more step, I don't get the hate for class action lawsuits.
Class action lawsuits are one of the only really effective ways consumers have to punish companies that misstep. They're not perfect, and they often end up profiting lawyers more than consumers. But at the same time, suing companies is expensive, and companies bank on that fact. They commit small violations, counting on the fact that most consumers will realize that it's not economically feasible to file claims for a few hundred dollars.
Aggregating multiple claims into a single lawsuit (for all of its flaws), solves that problem. It's pretty much the only thing we have right now that helps solve that problem. We've seen that with Equifax, Verizon, Yahoo, etc... the class action lawsuits hurt those companies a lot more than any regulation or criminal probes or boycotts did. If high-profile mistakes like the ones these companies made anger you, there's potentially an argument there for making class-action lawsuits even more powerful, not less.
I get that our legal system in the US is messed up and expensive. I don't understand why the consequences of that have to fall specifically on consumers.
Do you have an example of a ToS that prohibits class actions, but otherwise does not contain binding arbitration? I've never seen something like that.
> They commit small violations, counting on the fact that most consumers will realize that it's not economically feasible to file claims for a few hundred dollars.
Maybe not feasible for your time in going through the hassle of filing a claim, but the point of small claims court is intended to be inexpensive. The fee should be under $100, but I understand that still might be prohibitive for low-income users.
Unreal Engine is the first one that springs to mind[0]. No class actions or jury trials, and jurisdiction is restricted to North Carolina, but also no arbitration requirement.
> You agree not to bring or participate in a class or representative action, private attorney general action, or collective arbitration related to the Licensed Technology or this Agreement. You also agree not to seek to combine any action or arbitration related to the Licensed Technology or this Agreement with any other action or arbitration without the consent of all parties to this Agreement and all other actions or arbitrations.
I don't trust a company that explicitly goes out of its way to avoid accountability to do something as sensitive as manage credit cards for me.