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I wish him the best of luck but considering AT&T was a party in the big Supreme Court decision setting the precedent, I predict this falls down the dark hole of mandatory, binding arbitration about twelve minutes after the first hearing on a motion to dismiss and compel arbitration.

We’ve collectively given up our rights to sue in many instances (including when signing up for HN-backed services run by people who should know better).

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> (including when signing up for HN-backed services run by people who know they can get away with it)

I don't think so. This guy is the second (or third or whatever) person to sue AT&T over a SIM swap. The first case is already moving to trial: https://www.coindesk.com/att-fails-to-win-dismissal-in-24-mi....

So it gets moved to arbitration. If anything, it will move quicker and cost him less than a court case would.

Binding arbitration is almost unilaterally bad for consumers.

See: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/business/dealbook/arbitra...

Unilaterally is not an accurate description. Your link has exactly one relevant sentence:

>Roughly two-thirds of consumers contesting credit card fraud, fees or costly loans received no monetary awards in arbitration, according to The Times’s data.

Note that

1. This excludes non monetary awards

2. The categories are cherry picked and they give us no data on arbitrations overall

And even under those conditions they show a third of consumers win something, which is hardly a unilateral loss. And of course it's impossible to know how many of those cases were frivolous, and they didn't bother to compare to small claims court and see how consumers fare there.

Anyway it's not relevant to this case, because he's not suing for one of those categories, plus he presumably has a lawyer (lots of arbitrations are done without lawyers and I'd bet that they have lower success rates).

https://levelplayingfield.io/

For 2015, it shows the majority of cases settle, about 3k out of 5k. Out of the remaining, more than half get some kind of award. But reporting this data goes against the NYTimes narrative so they cherry picked.

.. but is guaranteed to rule in favor of the bigger party.

https://levelplayingfield.io/ For 2015, it shows the majority of cases settle, about 3k out of 5k. Out of the remaining, more than half get some kind of award.

Are those stats across all arbitration, voluntary and compulsory, or just for contractually mandated arbitration?

I'd imagine there's virtually no cases of consumers and businesses voluntarily using arbitration when there was no contractual agreement. Both sides need to agree to use arbitration.

I can dig through the data in a bit: they have the info under "source of authority", which will say whether it was in the contract or agreed upon later.

Looking at att in particular, they settle most of their cases. https://levelplayingfield.io/party/non-consumer-att

Why do you think so? Not what the data shows.

If by “him” you mean AT&T, definitely.

Arbitration is cheaper for both parties than court, in general.

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