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Comment by kshacker | Hacker News Reader

I wonder just like retailers are required to account for local sales taxes (I know it is not that clear cut), there should be some enforcement mechanism to settle disputes locally. Setup an agency which "legally" provides support for google, Amazon, and all those unreachable entities. Provides local jobs as well as quick grievance redressal. Maybe something like consumer protection agency but not federal, maybe at least one per county maybe more depending on the population.

Edit - I don't mind paying for the service. Maybe charge everyone $99 to file a case to avoid everyone piling on, but it helps resolve most egregious ones, and fee could be refunded at the agency's discretion.

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I can't speak for how effective the process is, but this is the idea behind the EU/UK GPSR's Authorised Representative framework - though not exactly local (that would be excessive, since GPSR also applies to much smaller sellers too)

I hope it works better than the EU DSA dispute resolution, which I've heard multiple accounts of youtube just ignoring.

Haha, let me guess, if they're based in Ireland then this enforcement is up to Ireland as well, so it's as toothless as the other digital laws?

Some kind of court, for small claims?

Just need to outlaw binding arbitration

Amazon will reimburse arbitration fees if you win making it a cheaper option for consumers than small claims court.

Two problems with that argument: 1) Amazon would also have to reimburse small claims court fees if you win, and 2) arbitration is worse for the consumer in pretty much every other way.

"If".

[Edit, because one-word replies are uncivilized: one reason to be suspicious about binding arbitration is that the company against whom you'll be pleading is a repeat customer of that arbitration service. It's a non-transparent / non-public process, so it's hard to have confidence is fair, and over which we (ie, the public) have no influence if it were not.]

>is a repeat customer of that arbitration service

Who is locked in by the contract. The arbitration company gets their fees no matter the outcome.

>so it's hard to have confidence is fair

You can appeal to a court if it's unfair.

"We examine whether firms have an informational advantage in selecting arbitrators in consumer arbitration [...] We first document that some arbitrators are systematically industry friendly while others are consumer friendly. Firms appear to utilize this information in the arbitrator selection process. Despite a randomly generated list of potential arbitrators, industry-friendly arbitrators are forty percent more likely to be selected than their consumer friendly counterparts. Better informed firms and consumers choose more favorable arbitrators. [...] Competition between arbitrators exacerbates the informational advantage of firms in equilibrium resulting in all arbitrators slanting towards being industry friendly. Evidence suggests that limiting the respondent’s and claimant’s inputs over the arbitrator selection process could significantly improve outcomes for consumers."

https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/working-papers...

Businesses also incorporate in jurisdictions that are business friendly too.

It's 75 bucks in the EU without waiting for the reimbursement.

Does that include flying out to wherever?

That won't get you your account back.

We could call it "small claims court".

> there should be some enforcement mechanism to settle disputes locally.

They are called courts and they exist.

Of course, companies like to require you to agree to binding arbitration, instead.

Or maybe pass some laws with more penalties for defrauding your own customers.

The solution to authoritarian problems is to organize.

In this case, we're overdue for a service that we all pay into, like a collective credit card, that only continues making payments to companies like Amazon if all of the members are happy. When you get banned without due process, payments stop until the matter is resolved.

Also, the collective can bargain-down rates. If it senses price increases beyond inflation, it just sends the adjusted amount, like 95%, until the matter is resolved.

We need this collective bargaining for housing (like tenant unions), the workplace, politics, pharmaceuticals, etc. The scale of this is so large that the collective could exist beyond any specific industry. So that it would operate as a meta economy beside the so-called free market economy (late-stage capitalism) that we operate under today due to the lack of antitrust enforcement.

Groups like the Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll) are working towards these sorts of goals on a number of fronts:

https://weall.org/

How would that work for countries where Amazon doesn't have a legal presence? A foreign court would be able to do anything.

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