SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1
Consumers may have a harder time suing financial companies they feel have wronged them.
The Senate voted Tuesday night to overturn a rule the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau worked on for more than five years. The final version of the rule banned companies from putting “mandatory arbitration clauses” in their contracts, language that prohibits consumers from bringing class-action lawsuits against them. It applies to institutions that sell financial products, including bank accounts and credit cards.
[...] “By forcing consumers into secret arbitration, corporations have long enjoyed an advantage in the process, and victims have often been precluded from sharing their stories with the press or law enforcement,” said Vanita Gupta, the president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a group of advocacy organizations based in Washington, D.C.
[...] Mandatory arbitration clauses typically say that companies or customers must resolve disputes through privately appointed individuals known as arbitrators, but not through the court system, allowing companies to save time and money and avoid negative publicity. When consumers sign forced arbitration clauses, which they may not realize are included in contracts, they waive their right to participate in a class-action lawsuit against companies.
[...] The Senate's vote against the CFPB’s rule “is a win for consumers,” said Rob Nichols, the president and CEO of the trade group American Bankers Association. “As we and others made clear in our multiple comments to the CFPB, the rule was always going to harm consumers and not help them.”
Source: MarketWatch
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Wednesday November 01 2017, @03:57AM (3 children)
This is something that continues to puzzle me. I know that we can all sometimes act against our own interests at times in politics, but it seems that the citizens of the US have raised this to an art form. If you don't like this law then simply vote out the party that is furthest from what you want, or vote in the party that is nearest to what you want.
Yes, yes, there are lots of issues to consider together, and you shouldn't be a one-policy voter, but this one clearly shows who has your back and who is in it for themselves (or their corporate masters).
I struggle to understand how a group of politicians can enact such a consumer-hostile law and not expect massive backlash from it.
My prediction - instead of Class Action lawsuits, these companies will now be flooded with 1-star reviews on Facebook et al. Either that or the CEO will be accused of having sex with underage animals or something.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Whoever on Wednesday November 01 2017, @05:16AM
Because they like one thing that the current Republicans have done and it dominates everything: normalized racism. Republican voters would prefer to be poorer as long as the darker-skinned people are poorer than them.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 01 2017, @03:11PM
[...]
I disagree that it is consumer-hostile. Litigation is a considerable cost-driver for everything in the US and has resulted in a lot of stupid, costly decisions over the years. Arbitration is a band aid over that.
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Wednesday November 01 2017, @04:03PM
This is because of a misconception that the party in power is the one causing this specific problem and the party that's not in power (because there's only two, right?) wouldn't have caused it, and the voters chose the wrong party. They didn't choose the wrong party, in this specific sense. The other party would either have made either this precise mistake or something that was functionally similar, most likely. The only difference would be how they sell it to their supporters.