I wrote and posted on HN about my experience taking a home warranty company to arbitration a few months ago. My experience was the same as this lawyers and IANAL. The company settled immediately for almost all that I asked for and paid the arbitration cost.

There are legitimate reasons companies pushed for arbitrtion. Namely streamlining and keeping away frivolous lawsuits, but there's the side bonus (for them) of scaring people away. Like that author described, companies make arbitration out to be this big, scary, unwinnable process, but it's really not like that at all.

I can tell you that sometimes it IS big and scary, although not unwinnable.

Unfortunately I can't share the details, but someone I know filed a wrongful termination case against a large tech company. They dragged it out for two years with motion after motion, running up his legal bills every month. He hung in there and won eventually.

So don't assume they'll just roll over and settle.

That sounds like court ordered arbitration or court monitored arbitration. That's different from my experience and that lawyer's arbitration. The later is a arbitration you agreed to enter into when you entered into the civil contract. There's no motions filed between the parties nor the arbitrator to the court in those.

Who chooses the arbitor? If the company chooses the arbitor, that's a clear conflict of interest. That's my issue with mandatory arbitration. After the fact that the arbitors' decision is legally binding in court.

They are specified in the clause. True, if it was a private company I would hesitate. However, there's at least a couple of 501c3 non-profit arbitration associations. The majority of clauses I've read uses one of them.

Minor nitpick, the judge can usually decide to override an arbiter, but they almost never do. It's rarely actually legally binding.

> Minor nitpick, the judge can usually decide to override an arbiter, but they almost never do. It's rarely actually legally binding.

Your second phrase does not follow from the first one, at least I can't follow it.

If the judge doesn't override the arbiter most of the times, doesn't that implicitly make arbitration... legally binding?

In my opinion, no. Practically speaking it's binding, and the judge's decision is legally binding, but the arbitration itself is not _legally_ binding in that subsequent judges in many jurisdictions can choose to ignore the arbiter with zero repercussions in law or precedent.

Thankyou for writing about your experience. I hope I never have to consult it, but I'm glad it's there.

The thing is... what if you're not in the States?

I guess you would have to read their terms of service for your country. They probably still contain instructions about what to do, even if those could be different.