Hacker News Reader

Comment by SkeuomorphicBee | Hacker News Reader

> It went pretty well.

...

> [...] I counter-offered 80% plus arbitration filing fee reimbursement. The next day, they responded back with an acceptance and sent over a release form. Case pretty much closed. I didn’t get 100% back, [...]

So author had to jump through hoops and in the end only got a percentage of what was owed. The text is written in the format of a feel-good success story, but the result is the oposite. What is described is a broken system, if the only punishment for the crime is to do what they should have done in the first place then there is no incentive for companies to do the right thing to begin with. Customer protection laws absolutely need a clause for double the reimbursement and I'm shocked that this person's country (I'm assuming it is the USA) doesn't have it. Without such a clause it is best for the company to just deny ALL claims and profit out of the people too lazy to go through arbitration.

View on HN

This was my takeaway as well. So in order to not get screwed everytime I do business with any corporation (i.e. virtually constantly in the modern world), I have to go scrutinize contracts, meticulously log phone calls, initiate and follow up on arbitration procedures, etc, and still lose money in the process? How is that a win? Who has time for all of that? It's so ridiculously one-sided, yet we're so conditioned to it that we think we're doing alright when we're just getting screwed.

> in order to not get screwed everytime I do business with any corporation

This has nothing to do with corporations. If you decided to only do business with natural persons you’d have the same burden of proof.

Sure, but there's still a crucial difference: the one other natural person has the same order of magnitude of resources to spend on the issue as you, instead of a multiple.

Plus a person might apply common sense and human judgement from the first contact instead of following procedure with no power to deviate from it even if it makes absolutely no sense at all.

You should read contracts and, if things go wrong, keep contact logs.

I didn't get that at all. Author takes on company legally, and with little effort wins most of what they are after (~10% difference).

I had a situation almost identical to this where I had an AC that gave out and after a month with the warranty company, I just fixed it myself. Because it was July. In the southern United States. I didn't even know about arbitration. I just assumed the black whole of rotating customer service agents and canned answers is the end of the line.

> I didn't get that at all. Author takes on company legally, and with little effort wins most of what they are after (~10% difference).

Paying 20% of what is not your responsibility to pay is still losing. It's just losing less.

> ~10% difference

In addition, there was the author's time without hot water, time spent on customer service, time spent figuring out how to file an AA case, and stress.

Author here. As the arbitration attorney said earlier, "They don’t make money by paying out claims!" No insurance company or home warranty company exists to pay out claims. I laugh when I hear them claim that their business is to diversify risk.

Any sort of out clause that the have to not pay a claim, they will try to use. In this case, it was "you didn't get a preauth." This makes it by no means a binary, black/white issue contrary to what a stereotypical HNer believes.

As far as a national consumer protection law that doubles reimbursement, good luck. I'm shocked that foreigners are shocked when they hear that the US actually has very few national laws. The country is big, diverse, and the regional histories that bought the states together, and grew, is too varied. The system is set up so that the states handle most legal issues. I for one am fine with that.

I think you proved SkeuomorphicBee's point. You are oblivious to the fact that you got f-ed over. You are talking past the argument thinking people won't notice that your feel good blog post is about how you think you won, but actually got screwed and are oh-so happy about it.

Bizarre.

Bizarre you think that things are either fucked over/not fucked over. I'd point out that the vast majority of lawsuits are settled before hitting the courtroom, but I think you're too young to understand what those words mean.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com