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Comment by KingOfCoders | Hacker News Reader

I tried to sell on Amazon, account + all accounts with same phone number were suspended before any interaction.

We need some external arbitration if the company has a defining market share. Hope the EU tackles this next.

I wonder what would happen if you get a new "recycled" phone number that had been used by someone else on ebay before.

I've had my cell phone phone number for at least 15 years, maybe even 20. I wonder if I should just keep it forever even though it's from an area 2.5 hours from where I live. I think it's 2 area codes away. It also makes it easy to filter spam, I can either recognize the number (stored contact) or know it's a person actually for me (local area code) or it's spam (phone numbers area code).

at least in my experience in the USA area codes are now at most nostalgia, if not meaningless. They leak a bit of info about where you signed up, but I cannot think of a person who bothered to cycle their number to correct the area code.

And tracking exists for when a phone changes hands. We receive money by Zelle at times--and every established link blew up the day my account "changed" (T-Mobile/Sprint, there wasn't actually a change but it reported as such.) Why can't the other companies have access to something of the sort?

Not sure forcing companies to keep customers works. At least not for retailers.

There's some precedence in contract law: https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/commercial-l...

If you accept me as a customer, I agree to your ToS, I rely on your service in my day-to-day business, and you later hose me by banning my account for no reason, there needs to be a remedy.

There's still frequent debate in the US as to whether companies can refuse to serve some customers on the basis of religion or sexual preference. So I would say there's a long wait before customers have universal decent rights.

If there were not monopolies this wouldn't be a problem. But another failure of some countries policies is in taking funding from companies and then making exceptions to let them grow into monopolies.

don't have to force them to keep customers, just force them to actually give users recourse for incorrect enforcement actions like htat

Arbitration is largely a scam, though. Companies use it to avoid having to go to court where they might lose.

Edit: as a commenter downthread reminded me, I forgot to add "in the US" to this comment.

Further, in civil arbitration you must pay the arbitration agent. If the other party fails to pay the agent, they report it to the court as failed arbitration and the case is dismissed. [ Harvard Law Review ]

A world outside the US exists.

In Germany E.g. arbitration for disputes with insurance companies is free and not organized by the company in their TOS but backed by the law, E.g. in insurance.

In the US, arbitration is purely a contractual matter between the parties. So, typically, companies (almost all of them these days, it seems) will require the use of arbitration instead of the courts. And they usually get to choose the arbitrator, who derives a great deal of income from that company.

There is a lot of economic incentive for arbitrators to find in favor of the company. There is very little economic incentive for them to find in favor of the person who has an issue with the company.

Arbitration regardless of market share. Does Amazon not have arbitration clauses in its seller agreements?

Those agreements usually permit the company to choose not to do business with you for any reason, including no reason. Usually that's fine since you can just use a competitor. But when a company has a significant market share and there are no realistically viable small business competitors, then consumers end up with no service for no reason. This is what I agree needs regulation.

> Those agreements usually permit the company to choose not to do business with you for any reason, including no reason.

At least for the linked article here the company isn't doing it for no reason, it's doing it for a libelous reason (calling the person a threat). Granted this libel is only published internally (pending a hack), so may not pass a legal threshold to be libel per se, but the actual reason for business termination may be arbitable.

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