I was amazed to read an article in Wired’s Listening Post blog which discusses a sneaky clause Cingular has included in its service contracts (I jettisoned Cingular in favor of T-Mobile a couple of months ago — I now have better customer service but less than stellar cellular service. Sigh.). The posting’s author, Eliot Van Buskirk, writes:
I received a disturbing notice from Cingular in my monthly bill … stating that I had already agreed never to sue Cingular in a court of general jurisdiction, and also that I can never be a part of any class-action lawsuit against the company. Instead, any dispute between Cingular and me that cannot be resolved by customer service (like, say, a brain tumor caused by one of their cellphones) must be resolved by an arbiter who will be paid for by Cingular (how convenient!).
Given that Cingular have just scored the big iPhone deal with Apple — one of the most ridiculous deals Apple could have engineered (in fact I can’t think of one that will do less to promote the iPhone — this sad, wimpy, ass-covering move is yet another example of a large corporation behaving in the predictably psychotic way that large corporations tend to. Eliot wonders whether Apple could be behind this move to make sure that its corporate ass is, at least in theory, covered in case of class action lawsuits over cellphone radiation induced brain tumors. I’d hazard that that may not be implausible but if true it would mean that Apple has definitely gone over to the dark side and we can expect all sorts of interesting new corporate behaviors from Apple and a much less friendly Apple may be in the offing.
