Lucas,
If somebody hurts you or rips you off, you call the police and maybe even take the perpetrator to court, right?
But if that "somebody" is a corporation, the odds are good that surrendering your constitutional rights — including your right to a day in court — is a condition in the business' take-it-or-leave-it terms.
The latest company to start denying its customers' rights is Dropbox — a Silicon Valley-based tech startup that millions of people use for storing and sharing files online.
Don't stand by while corporations deny consumer rights and evade accountability.
Tell Dropbox: Don't drop your customers' constitutional rights!
Dropbox announced that it's making changes to its terms of service, including adding a forced arbitration clause and a ban on consumers joining to take the company to court — a serious strike against its customers.
Corporations are increasingly using these terms to deny consumers their rights.
For years, Public Citizen has been standing up to these companies (including eBay, Starbucks and Charles Schwab), calling on Congress to end these corporate attacks on consumer rights and raising awareness so greater numbers of people like you can weigh in and make a difference.
Dropbox's forced arbitration clause means that if you ever have a dispute with the company, you can't go to a public court. You'll have to go alone to a private, secretive tribunal chosen by the company.
Class-action bans prevent you from banding together with other customers to hold companies accountable for deceptive, fraudulent and other harmful practices.
For example: Dropbox is trusted with its users' content. If Dropbox fails to adequately protect the content from a security breach and users suffer losses as a result, only the few customers with the time and resources to seek justice individually — in secret arbitration that is stacked against them — stand a chance to recover their losses. Meanwhile, Dropbox can escape real accountability for potential bad actions.
Public Citizen and the Fair Arbitration Now coalition urge you to join us in telling Dropbox to restore its customers' rights.
Tell Dropbox to drop the clause: Add your name to the petition demanding that Dropbox remove its forced arbitration clause and other provisions that attack our constitutional rights.
Thanks for all you do,
Rick Claypool
Public Citizen's Online Action Team
action@citizen.org
P.S. For now, users have the option of opting out of Dropbox's forced arbitration clause. But there is NO opting out of the class-action ban or other offensive policies. We don't believe customers should have to jump through hoops to keep their rights intact, but if you are a Dropbox customer and want to opt out of the forced arbitration clause, learn more here.