The Arbitration Trap: How Credit Card Companies Ensnare Consumers
Mandatory Arbitration Stacks Deck Against Credit Cardholders
The Arbitration Trap: How Credit Card Companies Ensnare Consumers Testimony of Laura MacCleery Director, Public Citizen’s Congress Watch
This report details how arbitration firms and credit card companies enjoy a cozy, mutually beneficial relationship at the expense of consumers they force into binding mandatory arbitration. Using data from California, the findings provide a glimpse of how arbitration traps consumers throughout the country in unfair, secret proceedings where for-profit arbitrators make the rules. Public Citizen’s research uncovered consumers who spent years fending off collection agencies, cleaning up identity theft messes and struggling to bounce back from credit rating hits.