Arbitration clauses: no car without one.
Mother Jones has a great piece on trying to buy a car without an mandatory arbitration clause. It can’t be done from a dealer, which means no new cars.
Try the same thing with cell phones. I asked at Sprint, they said no. (I couldn’t shop around as my wife’s employer will basically only support a particular PDA from Sprint.)
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Tags: arbitration, car buying, car dealers, cars, mandatory binding arbitration, Mother Jones, Sprint
Filed under: Mandatory Binding Arbitration Sucks
Tags: arbitration, car buying, car dealers, cars, mandatory binding arbitration, Mother Jones, Sprint
Filed under: Mandatory Binding Arbitration Sucks
3 Comments on “Arbitration clauses: no car without one.”
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All a person has to do is write the following above their signature when signing a contract: UCC 1-207 -or- without prejudice -or- all rights reserved. In doing so, you have in fact reserved all your inalienable rights. Without doing so, you are in fact waiving those rights depending on the verbiage in the contract. The clerk accepting the contract will not know what it means (not one person in 10,000 knows this information) and you won’t have any problem. make sure that you get a copy for your records if you ever need to press the issue.
I’m no attorney, but I can read and this works. Do a Google search on these terms to learn more about the Uniform Commercial Code and reserving your rights under contract law.
Also true for many Doctor’s offices: you will not be seen unless you agree to binding arbitration for any potential malpractice claims. Recently my wife and I went to a few doctors and were asked to sign this at all of them. When we refused to sign, most doctors saw us, but one doctor’s office told us we could not be seen until we signed.
Steve,
While writing something along those lines certainly couldn’t hurt, I wouldn’t rely on it to have the effect of negating an arbitration clause. I would be interested in the specific site were you read that this would work
*****The following is not meant to be legal advice or an authoritative answer, but is only a quick take on some of the problems with the idea.*****
First, if the company were to file in arbitration,it would be an issue for the arbitrator to decide.
Second, UCC 1-207, now UCC 1-308 is to the best of my knowledge actually intended to deal with disputes that are already happening not some possible future dispute.
Were the “reservation of rights” issue comes up is in dealing with satisfaction and accord. Say a company sold you something says you owe them X dollars for the product, and you say no the price negotiated was y. You then send them a check for y and write on it “In full satisfaction and accord of all claims.” Rather than having to give back a check for funds that are not disputed, 1-308 allows them to cash the check for the amount you admit you owe, while still reserving their rights to continue to attempt to collect the disputed amount.