New Terms of Service : mandatory arbitration?

Yikes. That’s going to be a no for me too. Adding that kind of clause to the terms of service and giving us just a few days right before Christmas before it goes into effect? That’s not enough time to figure out how to migrate stuff away from Linode without any disruption to business!

I’ve also been a Linode customer for many years, at least a decade, and I’m not going to stick around if this is an indication of how Linode plans to treat its customers in the future. Especially the way this is being done, with almost no warning right before Christmas. Not cool.

There also seems to be a ban on class actions and a “no warranties” disclaimer that seems to be the exact opposite of an SLA: Linode doesn’t owe you anything no matter how bad or long a disruption to the service is, and they have no obligation to fix any problems, ever. Was that in the old terms of service too?

I am also concerned and have been with Linode since the beginning. Does anyone have a breakdown of all the changes from the previous Terms of Service?

How does forced arbitration affect users in Europe?

I don't think you can just change the Terms without a clear overview of what has changed and give a reasonable time for customer to respond.

Thanks very much for your diligence and reading through our updated terms of service. These documents are important to Linode, and represent our efforts at presenting clear, concise, and consistent guidance as to the use of our services.

Arbitration and Dispute Resolution Provision: Section 12 of our master services agreement (the “MSA”) unifies the dispute resolution process for all Linode services. Other service providers have different dispute resolution mechanisms in supplemental program addenda, which effectively obscures arbitration clauses. In contrast, we wanted our MSA to be truly representative of all non-service specific terms and to provide a clear path on how to escalate disputes. The one exception to this principle can be found in our Privacy Policy, which contains mandatory language describing the dispute resolution process that is consistent with our Privacy Shield certification,.

Substantively, arbitration has been a part of Linode’s dispute resolution process since 25 May 2018 in furtherance of our compliance with the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (the “GDPR”) via the US Privacy Shield Frameworks for issues pertaining to data and privacy. Because data and privacy represents the core of Linode’s business, we took our compliance a step further by extending the GDPR’s principles to our entire ecosystem so that all our customers were treated equally.

Please note, we are always exploring ways to improve our policies and will include an arbitration opt-out (akin to our privacy opt-out) in our list of policy revision considerations.

In summary, the MSA’s dispute resolution provisions aims to satisfy our attempt at being (i) clear with our intentions with its inclusion in the 8 basic terms, (ii) concise about the dispute resolution process through step by step descriptions (instead of having to click through the links in the Privacy Shield and/or of our third party independent dispute resolution vendor); and (iii) consistent by eliminating the need to create a patch work of cross references between our managed services and self-service products.

Disclaimers of Provision: We apologize for any confusion, but the MSA does not modify Linode’s long standing policy of providing service credits in the event of an uptime disruption caused by us. To be clear, we did not materially change Section 9.4 of the MSA. Linode proudly stands by our efforts to fix issues and service disruptions when they occur, and has 24x7 watch 365 days a year to provide our immediate best efforts.

Again, we appreciate the time folks have taken to review these policies, and we'd hate for anyone to leave over them. If we can address any other concerns, please let us know (either here or via a ticket to our Support team).

@jackley I don't feel that you've clarified one of the points above, apologies if I don't understand your reply.

1) these terms involve a mandatory waiver of our legal rights - please can you give a yes/no answer to this?

I moved from DO a while ago because they pulled the same stunt - use of their service removed legal rights.

Struggling not to view this with cynical eyes - these changes were made in the run-up to Christmas in the hope that customers wouldn't notice?

No worries @markieb — our apologies in turn if we weren't clear with our response.

1) these terms involve a mandatory waiver of our legal rights - please can you give a yes/no answer to this?

Yes, acceptance of these terms means accepting arbitration, but the point is more nuanced than a binary choice.

These revisions certainly aren't meant to disempower our customers — quite the opposite. We are very aware of generally negative sentiments directed towards arbitration agreements, especially given how abuse of mandatory arbitration provisions have been used as a strategy to disenfranchise consumers in many industries. Despite this, we aren't hiding our arbitration provisions in a massive document or buried within supplementary documentation. Rather, we're being as transparent as possible with these changes to facilitate conversations like the one we're having here. We believe that this MSA, in conjunction with the customer-first business practices we've continued to maintain over the past 15+ years, will give our customers the best results when it comes to resolving disputes of any nature while providing top data protection standards.

On our timing, we didn't intend to obscure this announcement, but definitely see where you're coming from. We had a goal of implementing these changes on Jan 1, 2020, and this is just the way the chips fell. As a company that serves a global community, there's rarely a good time to make a major announcement that doesn't interfere with some major holiday, but we'll keep this in mind for the future.

If there's a specific provision in the MSA that you're concerned about, please let us know here, via ticket, email, IRC, Twitter, or any other way you'd like to reach out to us — we're here 24/7, 365 days a year. We've made several revisions based on feedback already, and are more than happy to consider further changes or otherwise clarify points of concern.

If there's a specific provision in the MSA that you're concerned
about, please let us know here.

Thirteen days over a major US holiday is really insufficient notice for a change of this magnitude; regardless of "the way the chips fell", the way these new terms are being deployed is souring me on a company that up until this week I've been raving about.

Migrating out based on this policy change. Pity we can’t create a poll to show how strongly so many feel about this.

I love Linode but this is troubling.

We are very aware of generally negative sentiments directed towards arbitration agreements

So despite the "negative sentiments" someone decided it was a good idea to do it anyway? Someone actually sat in a meeting and said let's piss off our loyal customers today?

Jim, with all due respect, that is not the Linode I have come to know. Linode has always been very pro-customer. It's why you have a loyal customer base and are highly regarded. This goes completely against that.

Obviously the hope is no one ever needs to worry about a lawsuit or arbitration but taking away our rights is very anti-customer.

Please note, we are always exploring ways to improve our policies and will include an arbitration opt-out (akin to our privacy opt-out) in our list of policy revision considerations.

This should be an option from day one. If you truly care about your customers you would delay the implementation of this policy change until you have the opt-out ready.

Congress needs to get their act together and make forced arbitration illegal. This should never have been allowed to happen in the first place.

It would be nice for Linode to reconsider this policy but they are just following what has, sadly, become standard practice.

Start sending messages to your representatives (not about Linode, in general) if this concerns you.

Couldn’t agree more KG. At the end of the day we can vote with our feet and go elsewhere.

If linode don't react quickly then no one will be looking back. There’s also a cost to migrate and migrating back if they change this will need some incentive to make it worthwhile, nostalgia alone won’t be enough!

This is fast becoming a competitive market, there are now plenty of options. Even dedicated server providers are scrambling to compete and if you’re prepared to manage multiple suppliers it’s not that much more expensive. Not usually worth the hassle but if this kind of fast tracked policy change is going to be typical, neither is the hassle of having to quickly migrate away.

I wonder whose bright idea this was anyway…