"Although critics question the legality of TRAPs, a legal analysis published last year found that courts generally uphold the agreements in challenges brought under anti-kickback provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the law establishing a federal minimum wage. However, the author of the study, Loyola Marymount associate law professor Jonathan F. Harris, said another type of legal challenge might prove more successful: courts could refuse to enforce TRAP contract language under the so-called unconscionability doctrine, a legal principle that allows judges to void agreements containing unreasonable terms dictated by a party “with superior bargaining power.” In 2000, the study noted, a federal judge in Manhattan nullified one employment agreement in the financial services industry, ruling that the language of the contract “approaches indentured servitude.”"
So, I don't get where you or the other person in this thread are getting the idea that this is a non issue because you can just ignore the contract terms. I too wish this was a non issue for those involved and ignorable, because it's despicable. It's obviously unconscionable and a problem that these companies are attempting to extort money from disadvantaged populations (not the supposedly previously narrower, highly paid technical applications of the agreements) even if said agreements existed in a counterfactual universe in which a corporation pursuing you for debt was a non issue. Debt is not expensive to draft continuous demand letters against or to transfer to a collections agency. Plus, you know, the above paragraph in the article.