Tesla’s direct sales model helps it thwart customer lawsuits | Hacker News Reader

Tesla’s direct sales model helps it thwart customer lawsuits

nytimes.com

33 pointsreaperducer10 comments

FTA: “Tesla buyers can opt out of arbitration, and preserve their right to a trial, by sending a letter to the company within a month of buying a car. But few are aware of or exercise that option, plaintiff’s lawyers said.”

Reminds me of the IRS, which gives you 30 days to snail mail critical stuff like 83-B elections but advertises those deadlines nowhere

https://archive.ph/60zHr

Aren’t you better off doing arbitration for small stuff? The company eats a bunch of the arbitration costs

Most arbitration agreements let the big company choose who does the arbitration. If you have the choice of giving a single consumer a fair deal, or keeping a giant client, which option is going to be chosen most of the time?

Court in america is pretty much expensive on purpose, as a way to give only rich people more access.

> Court in america is pretty much expensive on purpose, as a way to give only rich people more access.

If your problem is not worth spending $40 [1] then it's also probably not worth having a Judge, Court Recorder, and 2+ people's time.

[1]: https://www.njconsumeraffairs.gov/News/Consumer%20Briefs/sma...

Actually, most require both parties agree on the arbitrator.

In fact, everything in this comment is wrong. You should go read JAMS or AAA rules (which have existed and been reasonable well before any of the current irrational hate for anything but court)

Court is not expensive on purpose. It's expensive because super long, involved, processes that involve tons of formal interviews, depositions, document production, and document review, is just not cheap to run or do.

It's also unnecessary to reasonable outcomes the vast majority of the time, which is why ADR methods exist.

The reason for forced arbitration - aside from the unavoidable bias on the part of the arbitrator - is that many claims simply are not worth the costs required for a single victim. Eg it’s “efficient” in the sense that it means people can’t pay practically recover costs, so don’t try, this saving the company money.

For example: say a Company sells something with a known defect that costs $200 to repair. No on is going to hire a lawyer for a $200 bill on their own. So by forcing arbitration the company avoids having to pay for damages they cause.

We know that this is the sole reason for forced arbitration- not efficiency, etc that such corps claim - because whenever people do get together and then say “fine, have a tens of thousands of arbitration cases” companies try to get out of their own forced arbitration contracts.

Arbitration can also make sense when you have a weak case. Arbitrators tend to split the baby.

And for today’s two minutes of hate.

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