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Car Rental Insurance: Credit Card vs. Rental Company

by Graham Martin on March 4, 2011 · 4 comments

cage match

Nancy from San Francisco suggested the subject of this post during my recent interview with Michael Finney: If you have car rental insurance with your credit card, do you need to buy the insurance from the car rental company? It’s a good question, so for this week’s Fine Print Friday I am going to do a comparison and contrast of representative insurance policies. This cage match will be between American Express and Hertz Rent-A-Car….

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American Arbitration Association’s Commercial Rules, Part 1

October 7, 2011
american arbitration association logo

As part of Arbitration Insanity, I have elected to read through the American Arbitration Association’s (AAA) Commercial Arbitration Rules (PDF here). Since it is 15 pages of fine print, though, it will be done in chunks…because neither you nor I want to read all of that craziness in one sitting. The AAA is one of the main arbitration vendors used by United States companies for the resolution of disputes with its consumers. And as I …

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American Arbitration Association’s Commercial Rules, Part 2

October 14, 2011
american arbitration association logo

Continuing last week’s Fine Print Friday post on the first two sections of the American Arbitration Association’s (AAA) Commercial Rules (PDF here), this week I will examine the section entitled Commercial Arbitration Rules. As usual, I will look through the rules for provisions and clauses that are of particular interest to consumers, unique, or just downright odd. And since there are 54 Commercial Rules, I’m just going to ge…

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The Importance of Force Majeure Clauses

January 6, 2011

…aired until sometime in March. In the meantime, any group that had been planning to use it for an event is out in the cold. Case in point: the Twin Cities has one of the largest Hmong populations in the United States. A Hmong American New Year celebration had been scheduled to take place in the Metrodome, and was expected to draw 40,000 people. Due to the roof collapse, though, the event had to be cancelled, at a loss of $35,000 “in adverti…

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Fine Print Friday: Law Firm Retainer Agreement

May 4, 2012
scales of justice

…t as much as bringing a lawsuit, but depending on the arbiter and arbitration rules used, it may be disadvantageous. You should always check to see which arbitration rules are being used, because we have already seen that the American Arbitration Association’s rules and payment structure may be unfairly slanted against consumers. 9. File Retention. This firm only retains a copy of the client’s file for 2 years after completion. That s…

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(Lack of) Fine Print Friday: Subcontractor Contract

October 21, 2011
steam shovel

Typically I use Fine Print Friday to examine the fine print on a consumer contract for goods or services, like Verizon Wireless, Best Buy’s Return Policy, Comcast cable, and more. And lately I have been using this space to look at the language in arbitration clauses and the American Arbitration Association’s arbitration rules (which I will get back to next week). But this week I wanted to address the problems a person can run into w…

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PlayStation 3′s New Arbitration Clause: Lucky Us

September 20, 2011
Playstation 3 picture

…d instruction sheet. Piece of cake! Finally, for a great summary of this new contract language, listen to this great dialogue explaining the new PSN arbitration requirement produced by the Marketplace Tech Report, produced by American Public Media. If you send in your form letter above, please let us know what you receive from Sony—if anything….

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Verizon Wireless Customer Agreement Arbitration Provision

September 9, 2011
arbitration moot court

…ion court, as exemplified by Judge Wapner and Judge Judy). If the customer chooses arbitration (why s/he would choose that option I do not know), then the customer can also choose whether they use the arbitration rules of the American Arbitration Association or the Better Business Bureau’s dispute resolution rules (PDF). **A quick note on small claims court: Different states have different limits on the amount of money that can be claimed i…

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