AT&T, which has successfully lobbied state governments and the FCC to ban any broadband competition in the markets where it operates, says that its forced arbitration “agreements” aren’t really forced, because people in the markets it serves could just not use the internet.
The risable claim comes in response to a panel of Democratic Senators who accused AT&T of using forced arbitration to escape liability for falsely advertising better service than it provided to its customers.
“At the outset, no AT&T customer is ever ‘forced’ to agree to arbitration,” AT&T Executive VP Tim McKone wrote in a letter to US senators today. “Customers accept their contracts with AT&T freely and voluntarily; no one ‘forces’ them to obtain AT&T wireless service, DirecTV programming, or other products and services.”
AT&T: Forced arbitration isn’t “forced” because no one has to buy service
[Jon Brodkin/Ars Technica]
(via /.)