Thank you for this! Needed something upbeat this morning. However, I am constitutionally incapable of letting the warmth settle in my bones. Your piece raises the issue of Forced Arbitration, which is our corporate overlords' way of saying Ralph Nader never existed, or, more correctly, nothing like accountability will ever happen again. How come you weren't immediately shunted into one of their conflict-of-interest professional arbitrators? Is it because it was small claims court? https://fairarbitrationnow.org/what-is-forced-arbitration/
If people are reluctant to subscribe now this could be a factor - subscriptions I'm disabling from auto-renew are renewing. I just talked with my bank last week about charges from Amazon, Apple and an auto-renew from a software service I explicitly disabled that nonetheless went through. Amazon, after I looked up information on their music/podcast service, enrolled me in a music subscription without me realizing it. It didn't even show up on my Amazon recent purchases. I caught it within two days luckily and they reversed it. ... But this autorenew *sludge* is rampant right now. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/customer-service-sludge/683340/
Thank you for this! Needed something upbeat this morning. However, I am constitutionally incapable of letting the warmth settle in my bones. Your piece raises the issue of Forced Arbitration, which is our corporate overlords' way of saying Ralph Nader never existed, or, more correctly, nothing like accountability will ever happen again. How come you weren't immediately shunted into one of their conflict-of-interest professional arbitrators? Is it because it was small claims court? https://fairarbitrationnow.org/what-is-forced-arbitration/
I don’t know, but small claims does operate on different terms to keep it available to all. The claim amount is limited, however. Give it a try!
If people are reluctant to subscribe now this could be a factor - subscriptions I'm disabling from auto-renew are renewing. I just talked with my bank last week about charges from Amazon, Apple and an auto-renew from a software service I explicitly disabled that nonetheless went through. Amazon, after I looked up information on their music/podcast service, enrolled me in a music subscription without me realizing it. It didn't even show up on my Amazon recent purchases. I caught it within two days luckily and they reversed it. ... But this autorenew *sludge* is rampant right now. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/customer-service-sludge/683340/