Amazon updates Conditions of Use, swaps arbitration for court resolution

8 points by nathanaldensr ↗ HN
I just got an email from store-news@amazon.com:

We wanted to let you know that we recently updated our Conditions of Use.

One of our updates involves how disputes are resolved between you and Amazon. Previously, our Conditions of Use set out an arbitration process for those disputes. Our updated Conditions of Use provides for dispute resolution by the courts.

Please visit https://www.amazon.com/conditionsofuse to read our updated terms in full.

As always, your use of any Amazon service constitutes your agreement to our Conditions of Use.

Thank you,

Amazon

Did anyone know this was coming? This seems to be a big deal.

The relevant terms from the actual Conditions of Use:

DISPUTES

Any dispute or claim relating in any way to your use of any Amazon Service will be adjudicated in the state or Federal courts in King County, Washington, and you consent to exclusive jurisdiction and venue in these courts. We each waive any right to a jury trial.

Is that legal for a terms of service to dictate what court hears a case? Can Amazon unilaterally prevent jury trials? This seems insane to me.

3 comments

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I got the email too and had the same questions. Looks like it made news about a month ago when it was announced:

https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/1/22463550/amazon-lawsuit-ar...

According to the article, there are some questions about the validity of the jury trial waiver:

That last bit about waiving the right to a jury trial may be unusual for tech company ToS agreements, but as an alternative to arbitration, it’s certainly been tried in other industries — though some states have found such clauses to be unenforceable.