Well, there's a clue. Don't sign any that do. Or if they do, but do so in very very small print, take them to court anyway for miss-selling a contract.
Not anymore, thanks to the
AT&T v. Concepcion case, which has paved the way for a gutting of class actions in the US. It is now (IMHO) basically malpractice for any corporate or employment-defense attorney to not place a class-action/class-arbitration waiver in any consumer or employee contract. Big businesses all will go to the absolute legal limit in terms of how much they can limit their liability for any wrongdoing. Since we now live in an environment where one of the primary tools of the consumer--the class action--is actively being destroyed, every big business worth their salt is going to write up the same rigid contract that essentially makes it impossible for a large number of people to band together and sue a company for any wrong it commits on a massive scale. For example, after Concepcion, did you notice that Steam suddenly had a new agreement for everyone to sign? Guess what that agreement said? Exactly what AT&T won the rights to say in their agreements in Concepcion.
From Valve, when discussing their new agreement:
We’re also introducing a new dispute resolution process that will benefit you and Valve. Recently, a number of companies have created similar provisions which have generated lots of discussion from customers and communities, and we’ve been following these discussions closely....Most significant to the new dispute resolution terms is that customers may now only bring individual claims, not class action claims.
Companies do this because individual actions--especially ones limited to arbitration--will rarely if ever be enough to change a company's practices wholesale and will never really dent a company's bottom line. A company can test the limits with much less risk because no matter what they do, their exposure is going to be extremely limited. This means that without some sort of baseline regulatory framework, you are not going to find that "the market" is ever providing you with many options, because every big actor in the market is going to do the same thing as far as limiting their exposure to liability, just like how everyone made you sign something new after Concepcion (if they didn't have similar language already). That is rarely if ever a consideration of your average consumer because it is behind the curtain. How many people walk into an AT&T store thinking "do you have any contracts that allow me to bring class actions in the Superior Court of my local jurisdiction?" How many people read the license agreement when they sign up for a website or an online service? How many people quit Steam because of their new agreement? (How many people were commenting on that part of the agreement when they were ranting and raving about their hatred of Steam?) How many people read the fine print, ever? Not many. This is largely why I believe the libertarian "free market" myth to be, well a myth. If the AT&T store says "sorry, no contracts like that" then Joe Customer is going to go where exactly? Verizon? Same deal. Sprint? Nope. T-Mobile. Same problem. Choice when it comes to what Cellphone you want is basically unlimited. Choice when it comes to protecting your rights as a consumer is almost nonexistent.
So the problem identified in the OP is not really a problem for sophisticated purchasers (i.e., business to business contracts) who have the leverage and the opportunity to negotiate. The problem is with regular purchasers who, for instance, buy a cellphone plan, or sign up for a credit card, or make any purchase that involves any sort of agreement. Which these days is almost everything considering how much is bought and sold via e-commerce, which is full of click-wrap agreements that basically sign your soul away. Buyer beware is stronger than it has been in a long long time and lawyers cannot save you.
