Hacker News Reader

Comment by londons_explore | Hacker News Reader

I'd also be fine with the T&C's saying "For any reason, we can terminate the services we provide to you, and we will refund any money's paid with interest".

That way, the company can decide to keep the evidence to themselves and not need to go to court, but must forgo all revenue from your account.

View on HN

All money and interest is not enough.

If sign a contract that you will provide me a service and you back out of it midway, I'm usually worse off than if you had declined the engagement in advance. For example, if I contract you to build me a house, it takes six months, and three months in you decide to back out and pay me back with interest, I still have half a house I need to demolish or else I have to find someone who would continue your work (which I likely won't find), and I'm out 3 months' rent.

I would expect additional compensation.

This doesn't transfer well into this example though. You could argue that if you lose a library of 100+ books you also lose information on what those books even where, but a better solution for that would be to just demand some machine-generated list of what you had so you can buy them again somewhere else.

There's other lost value. What if a book is out of print or out of publishing? What if you had comments? What if you had bookmarks?

What if you brought your Kindle on a two-month-long hiking trip to South America and they don't sell them over there?

I'm doubtful that you would get additional compensation in your hypothetical example.

You're not worse off if you didn't spend anything and you are half-way towards your goal of having a house.

"You're not worse off if you didn't spend anything and you are half-way towards your goal of having a house. "

Contractors hate taking over someone elses' half-done work, as they now have to deal with someone else's shortcuts without knowing what they are.

100% I would. It's pretty easy to show damages, and I would take the contractor to court. Also, I believe these contracts have breakout clauses that define exactly how much I would get, too.

(This goes both ways, of course - if I back off the deal and have the contractor stop all work, I usually have to pay in full anyway.)

Seems like it would fall under https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel ?

Some variation on this sounds like a good compromise. Both parties need to have some skin in the game but currently that's not true. At the moment terminating an account is a fast and nearly cost-free solution to many thorny account policing issues and therefore a great option for customer service drones.

It's only the occasional "I managed to raise a storm on Twitter so the CEO noticed" that has any cost to the company and thus any chance of getting a resolution.

I’ve bought 100 books on Kindle. You’re saying I could do something that would cause Amazon to decide to break the contract, and I’d get a refund of all 100 books with interest? Seems like a sweet deal to me, since I’m not reading the old books very often.

While true, for other people they'd use the money to repurchase those same books elsewhere. Or perhaps the printed version of them.

Amazon could take you to court instead for breaking the contract. What he suggested was that it would be up to Amazon.

The comment says "do something that would cause Amazon to break the contract", not "break the contract myself".

What about the notes that you add to the books? For students they can mean failing a course.

If you break the rules of the contract what makes you think you get your money back? If you want a refund you should be required to prove that the company was the one that violated the agreement.

"Semper necessitas probandi incumbit ei qui agit" The company refusing to provide a service and shutting your account down should be the one to prove an eventual violation of an agreement. Too often we are witnessing content and/or service providers refuse to acknowledge the cause of an account being blocked - most of the times I've read about because of false positives in automatic detection systems and the likes. There should be at the very least a middle ground, such as being able to access content already paid for and only that.

"Semper necessitas probandi incumbit ei qui agit"

Means "The claimant is always bound to prove: the burden of proof lies on him." For anyone who can't read latin (and doesn't want to have to google a latin phrase in an english conversation).

The problem in countries with expensive litigation is that it raises the bar for what a person would be willing to fight for. If I'll end up spending $10000 whether I win or lose I'll think twice before I litigate for a few hundreds or even thousands of dollars worth of ebooks. It also incentivizes companies to do it for as long as they know they'll get away with it.

You're pitting a company with billions to spend on this stuff and all the incentive to keep doing it against a regular consumer with none of the resources or determination. This is where regulation comes in and it should always favor the consumer by default. It's why countries have consumer protection agencies but no company protection agencies.

> If I'll end up spending $10000 whether I win or lose I'll think twice before I litigate for a few hundreds or even thousands of dollars worth of ebooks.

Wouldn't a possible avenue here [in the US] be small claims court? Or could costs still rise to that level under that situation?

You would forfeit anything in excess of the small claims limit, probably around $5k.

Also costs around $100 to file and you're looking at at a day or two of time away from work.

Prove to whom? The arbitration judge?

The contract such as "we may block your account for uploading any content against our guidelines. We may rule content to be against our guidelines for any reason and at our sole discrecion."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com