Crowd Funding a Lawsuit

So the other day, I read that if you have a cable service that you pay for by having the cable company directly take your bill out of your bank account, they will continue to charge you several months after the cancellation of your account for as some sort of "accounting accident." In trying to fix it, customer service reps will bounce your call around/hang up on you/do everything but fix your issue while you still have to foot the bill for services you had already cancelled. The idea is that the extra funds the service provider steals are profitable because too few people can afford the legal hassle it takes to sue for their money back, and even if they can, the lawsuit could be more expensive than the stolen funds the plaintiff would win.

I haven't done much research on this issue, but I had an idea where someone could start a kickstarter to appropriate funds to help people afford to sue service providers that stole funds from other people, almost like a "theft insurance." Along with donation funding, anyone taking from the pot would have to agree to put a set portion of their winnings back into the program to help others.

The idea is definitely half baked, but does anyone have any thoughts on it?

That looks to me like a clear cut case of theft. If this is common practice for the cable company involved, a class action lawsuit is probably the way to go, provided you can round up enough victims for a lawyer to consider handling the case on a "no win, no fee" basis.

GreyGhost said:

a class action lawsuit is probably the way to go

Maybe, but only in countries where class action lawsuits exist AND use a common law system. I think the USA is pretty unique in that combination. Elsewhere, if you have 10000 victims, you must also have 10000 different lawsuits, each with a potentially different outcome.

Sure,you can have a "group lawsuit" but unlike a class action lawsuit in a common law legel system, even if that particular group wins the lawsuit, this creates no precedent and no guarantees for any of the following lawsuits -if any- for the same case.

I was a part of a class action lawsuit. An ISP kept billing me $50 per month and got $100 from me. I canceled the service three times. Each month still getting billed $50 each month. Eventually I had a yelling contest with the management. They found clearly the most angry and intimidating man to yell with me.

6 months later I was mailed something saying someone was class action law suiting the ISP. Well I got my 5 cent check for my $100 loss. Now I know just call the credit card company. Which I did on the 3rd month the ISP tried to charge me $50.

Crowd funding is the way to go. Free money!!!!

Eventually someone will crowd fund a lawsuit against crowd funding video games that take the money and run or fail.

Every successful corporation is an evil corporation.

flubbernugget said:

Along with donation funding, anyone taking from the pot would have to agree to put a set portion of their winnings back into the program to help others.

but there's no crowd funding lawsuit for that is there?

Well, today you can even crowd-fund paramilitaries openly, so why not lawsuits?

I wonder what would happen if that Pledgie was pro-Russian or pro-ISIS, though...would the donors remain anonymous and unharassed by the FSB, FBI, the NSA and the CIA for long? The saddest thing is that it gained 3 donors since yesterday :-/

40oz said:

but there's no crowd funding lawsuit for that is there?

Well I'm assuming the same pot could help cover that.

That does bring up a point; the more complex the system gets the easier it is to become a corrupt part of it. Where is the line between effective and abused?