The Right to Have Rights

If you have a PayPal account, you may have gotten an email from them - they've updated their terms of service to remove your right to participate in a class action lawsuit against them, unless you send a formal and precisely formatted letter to their legal department "opting out" of their removal of your rights.

Public Citizen has designed a template (specifically, a DOCX file) you can add your name/phone/email address to, print, sign, and mail to them. I'm doing it. Don't forget about filling one out for eBay too, due on Nov 9.

There's also a classy "rogues gallery", also done by Public Citizen, that lists other companies that have added these clauses to their terms. Everyone from Papa John's pizza to your local nursing home. Truly grotesque.

Sure, leave a comment:
  1. Serrano

    Wow, even Amazon? I thought they were one of those "nice" corporations. Thanks for spreading the word.

  2. Robert Holbert

    I think class action lawsuits have been largely abused, so as much as I would like for them to remain a tool to fight broad injustice I can understand why companies are including these clauses left and right. I've been included in several settlements in which I never actively participated or even felt I had been wronged -- sometimes quite the opposite. I think it is silly that we can take a few selected, often biased incidents and use them to extrapolate a larger pattern of wrongdoing.