HACKER Q&A
📣 puglr

Has anyone had the deck stacked against them in arbitration?


With respect to the arbitration terms found in any given Terms of Service, there are two competing ideas I've seen a lot on HN recently:

1) Those asserting arbitration is a scam or otherwise unfair. The company whose TOS you've signed is the one paying the arbitrator, after all. This system is designed for you to lose.

2) Those with personal anecdotes about going through arbitration, who had a decent-at-worst experience, and ended up winning.

If there's one thing I've learned from the internet, it's that positive outcomes generate a light breeze, but negative outcomes generate a storm. If arbitration was inherently unfair -- at least as often as we seem to tell ourselves -- I'd think I'd see more anecdotes about it. So far I've seen zero. Maybe that's just "luck", but I figured I'd ask, directly to the community whose discussions about it prompted to this question.

Disclaimer: I'm not a fan of the de-facto forced arbitration imposed on anyone who doesn't want to (or can't) run their own email server, etc. I've been deeply dismayed by the last few SCOTUS decisions on this subject. And yet I haven't come across an anecdote of anyone getting boned. Indeed, in my own social circle I know 2 folks who have been through such arbitration. They both assumed the deck was stacked against them, and they both emerged victorious.


  👤 ev1 Accepted Answer ✓
I've been through arbitration once and won. I did not need to really provide anything remotely close to legal documentation tier stuff, I had one recording of a sales rep absolutely lying their ass off to close a sale, the next month's invoice directly contradicting their repeated and explicit promises. Arb awarded me 3x the total cost of the contract (several thousand) and considered the contract terminated (instead of 24 month + ETF being to pay out the entire cost).

It honestly felt closer to "we will pay the arbitrators their $1k fee so that we don't have to pay the lawyers $50k, and whatever prize they award you is still going to be cheaper than asking our general counsel a single question".