It says you’re bound by “opening and using” the product, rather than “opening or using”. Have someone else open it for you. Then neither of you have done both.
Thus is the kind of legalistic bullshit interpretation I can get right behind
I think having someone open if for you still counts. You’d have to already find one opened.
Go one step further and have someone under 18 who cannot legally enter into a contract open it haha
This is Vital Proteins brilliant response to being taken to court over heavy metal and “foreign materials” contamination in their products.
Do you have any supporting links? I saw a reddit post saying something similar but I cant find a real article or support. Either way I am returning the product.
https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/prop65/complaints/2017-02480C5316.pdf
Found searching ‘“vital proteins” lawsuit’
Sued by an environmental nonprofit for failing to warn about the presence of lead and heavy metals as required by CA law. They settled.
Found searching ‘“vital proteins” lawsuit’
that’s just cheating
In the ’20s tho? Not rly
Seems like a labelling issue due to california laws rather than legitimate ingredient flaws with toxic or heavy metals.
perhaps related to this?
https://www.health.com/vital-proteins-collagen-peptides-recall-2023-7510523
I’m sure they definitely didn’t think removing all those pesky “foreign materials” and next-gen metals from they products…
Mandatory arbitration agreement for a protein shake or whatever it is. First it may not be enforceable. Second it makes me think that this product is not fit for consumption.
I wonder if we’re not fucking ourselves.
“Not enforceable” may have been a thing of the past, with the way technology has developed. We may be approaching a point where terms & conditions ARE enforceable.
I honestly think it’s just a ridiculous ploy and that the product is fine. We need a proper regulatory system instead of this junk. I do think it’s unenforceable though.
Add to this the fact they try to enforce mandatory arbitration - a thing that shouldn’t ever exist to begin with, in any jurisdiction, and is actually unenforceable in many.
In most of Europe, no contract can take away legal rights
Same in the USA, but that doesn’t mean they won’t try.
I’m pretty sure forced arbitration is in fact legal and enforceable in the US (at least for the most part? I am not a lawyer)
Unfortunately, the US doesn’t yet consider that a legal right. Sadly, courts take the position that if you don’t agree with the terms, don’t buy the product. Even in the cases where you couldn’t access the terms ahead of the sale.
This, and contract details that are shown after opening the packaging (as seen here covered by the lid) are void.
Exactly
It doesn’t matter if you can’t afford the lawsuit.
Then lack or presence thereof won’t help you, either.
Please rephrase.
I’m just saying that if you can’t afford the legal fees, you won’t be able to initiate a lawsuit even if there was no such warning on the lid in the first place.
Isn’t that an illegally forced agreement? I mean, the consumer already bought the product and is forced to enter an agreement after the fact? At least it feels like it would be illegal.
It’s the same with software, sure, but somehow I’ve been brainwashed into thinking it’s ok because it’s a digital product/I only agree to a license of said product.
If this is in the US you are 1 year away before companies can run Squid Games, “illegally forced agreement” is a thing of the past
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Well they do hide their own guy amongst the players who can influence the vote
awesome, I hope the hunger games are only a few decades away
Def illégal in Germany. You can’t force an arbitration agreement.
No way this is legally binding. It amounts to a bait and switch. A product was purchased and provided without agreement to any further terms. Then they sneak in supposed terms after the fact based upon the action of opening the product. That is a change in agreement made without any consideration for the purchaser. That’s not generally allowed in contact law.
Furthermore, I really doubt that they can get away with the argument that the act of opening a product can constitute any amount of conscious agreement to some writing on a package. If for no other reason than that this is (afaik) a novel way to attempt to coerce agreement such that nobody would expect such an agreement to be part of the opening process and likely won’t notice it.
And it’s not accessible for every person who may be using this product even if they do notice the words. Are you a non-English speaker? Farsighted? Blind? Illiterate? Would you have any way to even be aware that those words are terms that somehow binding you to an agreement by virtue of your opening the thing you just bought? Would you have any reason to even suspect that that is the case?
Also, they’ll undoubtedly claim that the fact that you have the opened product means that you agreed to the terms, but that is also not the case. Your mom opened it for you and wrapped it as a gift? You bought it secondhand? The packaging was torn open when it shipped to you and you never had any reason to see this text in the first place? It was misprinted? Any of those things and more would mean you never agreed to anything. And they have no way to prove any of those things weren’t the case.
Just stupid. I have zero doubt that any number of lawyers would love take this to court and get that payday.
Absofuckinglutely
If I bought it and got home and found this, I’d return it as I have before. You’re not trapping me into agreeing for anything without the notice on the OUTSIDE of the product packaging. Fuck this
Plus it speaks volumes to the product itself. If they’re trying to pull shit like this there’s no way I’m trusting whatever they’re trying to get me to put in my body.
Yeah, feels like a trick.
It actually does have legal precident. You know how you can’t read or accept the EULA for software until after you purchase it?
They get away with stuff like that when they have sold you a “license” to their software, rather than something you gave actually purchased outright. It is argued that a license is a an agreement to access a software product, rather than ownership of it, and putting an EULA in between your license purchase or changing it later doesn’t affect your purchase because you continue to hold the license even if you choose not to agree to the terms necessary to use it. It’s a bit different for a physical item that you have actual ownership over, not a license to use it (pending agreement).
I also find all of that to be loophole bullshit that should be fixed, but that’s a separate issue.
If they can change their EULA at any time without consent for something you already purchased that should enable the option for a full refund if declined.
Accept the new license or refund.
Agreed
While true, the software put it in your face and forces you to interact with a screen that says “EULA”. I doubt using a consumable as intended will hold any jurisprudence. But then again look who we have appointing judges right now…
Yep, I was just agreeing with someone else saying this is unenforceable. Just a ridiculous ploy and an attempt to make it precedent.
Would love to see them try and enforce whatever EULA they wrote up.
They’ll drag out any legal challenge in hopes you won’t want to pay for months of legal fees fighting it, on top of whatever legal fees are incurred that caused you to challenge it in the first place…
Sometimes mandatory arbitration doesn’t work out so well for companies either as Valve found out. When they run into what are effectively class action lawsuits but they get forced into individual arbitration with hundreds of thousands of people that clause starts to look really dumb.
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Forced Arbitration should be illegal everywhere.
Usually is
There’s an easy solution: keep buying it, break the seal to get to the message, then return it. Have your friends do the same, at the same store. Pretty soon that product will be gone and you can move on to the next store.
If the store starts to bitch about it, you can claim that you wanted to see if the statement had been removed.
Time to use the box cutter and open it from the bottom.
Yeah they really slipped up by saying “and” using it, as opposed to “or”.
I’m going to gnaw into it like a little rat.
Is there a bigger red flag than a message on it saying ‘if you break this seal you can’t sue us!’
Ackchyually, that makes it easier to sue them.
Attorney: -calls witness, a physicist- Physicist: “by simply observing this product, even without opening it, your clients life was changed in some way.” Attorney: “crazy label people, pay up!”
I mean, you at least should be reimbursed for the costs of returning it to the store (bus fare/gas, and an hour of your time), and it’s probably not worth it to anyone to sue them for it, but I really wish someone would
That’s concerning.
Vital Proteins got bought out by Nestle and almost immediately turned to shit iirc
I didn’t know this—time to shop for a new collagen supplement.
Interesting how we’ve all become accustomed to the notion that “agreeing to arbitration” has just become “waving your consumer rights” and no lawmaker is pushing to have that fixed.
no lawmaker is pushing to have that fixed.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_Arbitration_Injustice_Repeal_Act
Was reintroduced several times, Passed the house once. Republicans keep killing it in committee.
There’s also the Justice for workers Act specifically for employer force arbitration, more recently
Because 98% of them are on the corporations’ side because they practice insider trading.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_Arbitration_Injustice_Repeal_Act
Don’t be too lazy with your both sides bullshit.
The Senate version of the bill, S.505, has 39 cosponsors, all of them being Democrats.[6]
Holy shit. How does this not just reduce their sales to 0?
Well, the purchase is probably already made by the time this is seen, and for those who see it, they probably just ignore it similarly to EULA popups when installing programs.
It’s not legally binding.
The same way millions of
fucking moronsregular non-political people voted for drumpf: they thought, “well all politicians are bad, so it’s not like voting for a bad guy is bad.”Most companies have loads of legalese attempting to protect themselves. Contrary to popular belief, that does not make them all equal.
Those things aren’t even remotely similar to each other in terms of badness.
An analogy doesn’t have to be identical to never the less share similarities. I even spelled out the part to consider: Just because two things are bad does not make them equally bad.
You know how all these companies are making it lives shittier?
Well people are what companies are. And people are the absolute fucking worst.
And unfortunately there are on orders of magnitude more shitty people who don’t run the worst companies in existence than there are people who work for the worst of companies that are making them what they are.
Find your people, the ones that don’t suck, because there are a lot more people who only want what’s convenient for them and can’t spare one spark of concern for all of the consequences that affect entirely too many people that don’t want their decisions
Are you saying poop can be religious? It’s an inanimate object so I disagree. Your whole comment is dumb.
See I ignored the rest and just assumed. That’s how.
Just wait until you hear about holy water.
I do get the point of your comment, but I couldn’t resist
Edit: it’s also funny as hell that you got downvoted, thereby proving your point. People really don’t read to the end of things
