It's expensive for businesses because they tend to find in favour of the consumer, whereas with forced arbitration the business can pick the most biased arbitrator to rule in their favour.
Well, okay. Right. I agree. I just don't want people reinforcing the meme that "justice is always slow and expensive and that's why businesses want arbitration" when the real reason is "courts are too fair and that's why businesses want arbitration". The accessibility, fairness, speed and low cost of small claims courts to poor individual litigants is a bug, not a feature, from the perspective of the US's larger corporations.
From what it seems like, most large companies tend to use the same few arbitration firms. JAMS and AAA come up often in the contracts I've read. How often does this "arbitrator shopping" actually happen? It's a complaint I hear often, but little in the way of data to support it.
I have seen data to suggest that arbitrators rule often in the favor of the companies, but that could be a result of more people raising bullshit claims since it's significantly easier to do so.
I'd love to see the data either way. "Arbitration is popular because it always screws the customer!" is a wonderful emotionally-evocative talking point, but that seems way too simplistic and pithy for me.
