Modria Launches A “Fairness Engine” For Online Dispute Resolution

Earlier this morning, we got an email from a lady whose account was mistakenly charged a few times too many by an online pet food store. There is little we can do about that, but it’s a clear sign that even today, resolving those kinds of online disputes is still hard. Modria wants to change this with the help of its Fairness Engine.

The privately funded company, which was founded in 2011, says that its cloud-based service helps “all parties involved in an online dispute to the table quickly and lets them arrive at an equitable solution that helps save costs and increase brand loyalty.” The team behind the service already helped companies like eBay and PayPal solve more than 400 million cases. Indeed, Modria founder and CEO Colin Rule spent eight years as the Director of Online Dispute Resolution for eBay and PayPal.

Modria helps businesses flag and diagnose customer issues and knows enough about the legal technicalities behind these problems to speed up the negotiation process. The tool uses four different modules for diagnosis, negotiation, mediation and arbitration.

“Complaints and disputes are a fact of life in the networked economy, from online marketplaces to online banking. They happen hundreds of millions of times a year. What has been missing is a solution that solves these disputes. Modria’s Fairness Engine solves this problem with a transparent and human process,” said Rule in a canned statement today. “It’s the first step toward a future in which companies and customers around the world settle their disputes amicably outside the overburdened court system.”

Throughout the process, users can upload text files, PDFs and videos to make their cases, but if all else fails and the two parties can reach a mutual agreement, Modria’s arbitration module will help the two parties select a decision maker to render a decision.

Modria offers a 14-day free trial. After that, the pricing depends on the claimed value and starts at $200 for cases where the value is under $10,000 and tops out at $5,000 for claimed values over $100,000. The company also offers customized enterprise plans.