Comment by dannyw
2 days ago
I took Google to a tribunal (think Australian equivalent of small claims) a few years ago, over a defective Pixel they refused to repair 2 years and 1 month after purchase.
Under Australian Consumer Law, I wanted to make the case that a premium phone should last more than 2 years.
Google’s representatives initially sent letters arguing that the license agreement forces me to arbitrate, to which I responded by adding another claim that binding arbitration is an unfair contract provision under the same ACL and should be declared void.
A couple days before the case, I received an offer to settle for a brand new phone and my filing fees, to which I accepted.
No chargebacks, no ban, just the legal system working as it should while being accessible to everyday folks.
That's a fantastic outcome, and honestly, a bit of a unicorn from my perspective here in the US. Your story about the Australian Consumer Law having actual teeth is a breath of fresh air. Here in the US, it feels like we're playing a whole different ball game, and the house (of Google) always wins.
A buddy of mine, let's call him "Dave," had a strikingly similar issue with a Pixel phone a couple of years back. His device started bootlooping out of the blue about 18 months after he bought it. Not exactly what you'd call a "premium" experience. He went through the standard support rigmarole, which I'm sure you're familiar with – the endless chat bots, the canned email responses, the escalations to senior support agents who just read from the same script. The final word from on high was, "Sorry, you're out of the one-year warranty. We can't help you."
Dave, being the stubborn engineer type, decided he wasn't going to take that lying down. He'd read about people having success in small claims court and thought, "How hard can it be?" He did his homework, found the correct legal entity for Google in his state, and filed the paperwork. The filing fee wasn't outrageous, something like $75. He wasn't asking for the moon, just the cost of a replacement phone and the filing fee.
This is where the story takes a decidedly American turn. A few weeks after filing, he didn't get a settlement offer. Instead, he got a thick envelope from a fancy law firm. It was a motion to compel arbitration. Buried deep in the terms of service that we all click "agree" to without reading, there was, of course, a binding arbitration clause. And not just any arbitration, but one that would be conducted by an arbitrator of Google's choosing, in a location convenient for them (Northern California, naturally), and he'd have to split the cost of the arbitrator, which can run into thousands of dollars.
So, his $75 gamble to get a new phone suddenly had the potential to turn into a multi-thousand-dollar boondoggle. The letter from the lawyers was polite, but the message was clear: "drop this, or we'll bury you in legal fees." They weren't just trying to avoid paying for a faulty phone; they were making an example of him.
Dave folded. He couldn't afford to take the risk. So, not only did he not get his phone replaced, but he was also out the filing fee and a good chunk of his time and energy. He ended up just buying an iPhone out of spite.
This is why arbitration on consumers should be illegal - aka, arbitration should only be legal when both entities are approximately similar in power/capability.
The whole reason for existence of courts is to ensure that parties with unequal power can be fairly treated. Arbitration seems to remove that via a loop hole.