I can't imagine Phil suing anyone on his own accord. The Guy is such a lazy bastard even if he had fuck-you money he wouldn't sue someone if he had to appear in court. All he wants to do is talk out of his ass anyway. Bitching is directly linked to making money. Suing is too cumbersome a way to make money for him.
He might get somewhere with one of those contingency guys, but they tend to aim for settlements over going to actual court - and Phil doesn't like sharing
HIS money - just ask John and Howard. Even if Phil wanted to go
pro se, he'd still need the filing fee - which depending on the state is at least a couple hundred bucks. Assuming he did get up off the filing fees, it wouldn't take long before he got himself branded as a vexatious litigant and bounced out of the Hallowed Halls.
As someone whose used gamespass for years. Microsoft is by far the worst for auto renewal and deceptive trials.
Auto renewals are shitty but there not illegal. They rely on the same bullshit most user agreements rely on. You being a fucking idiot who can't read. For example a twitch contract, and the terms within. Funny thing is there usually pretty short and sweet with memberships. It's 2022 if your surprised by free trial programs you really gotta be retarded.
Slight powerlevel here, but I was an XBL member from the Beta Test days and when they went from OG Xbox to Xbox 360, I was reluctant to upgrade due in no small part to the 360's 50+% failure rate. My favorite game was PSO, and I had to pay an extra monthly fee for that - but my OG Xbox eventually gave up the ghost and so I had like three months left on my XBL subscription and no Xbox. I checked my credit card and noticed that it was gonna expire a month before the XBL membership did, so I figured matters would solve themselves. Once the credit card expired and I didn't give a new one to Microsoft, they couldn't charge me another year's membership - and I could go back once they finally ironed out that Red Ring of Death thing. Easy peasy, or so I thought.
Four or five years later, they actually had ironed it out, so I got myself one of those nice black models with the 250GB hard drive and - as a lark - checked to see if they retired my old Gamertag. They hadn't. What was weirder still was I still had an active membership to XBL. "WTF?" I asked myself. So I checked my old statements (my subs were paid in November, which was a pretty busy shopping time for me and most other folks) and sure enough, like clockwork, Microsoft had continued to charge an EXPIRED credit card the yearly membership fee, and it just got lost in the holiday shuffle. Now, if -I- tried to use my -own- credit card and it was expired, I'd catch hell for fraud at the lightest; but Microsoft? They just kept ringing it up and the bank just kept paying them - and charging me - like everything was fine.
So I called the bank and raised hell. "What the fuck are you doing? You guys repeatedly paid these people charging money on a credit card that expired FOUR YEARS AGO without ONCE contacting me? When we both know that if I so much as tried to buy a loaf of bread with that card two days after it expired you'd call the fucking cops on me?" They apologized for 'the inconvenience' and told me to take it up with Microsoft. Microsoft told me to take it up with the bank, but their policy has always been 'No Refunds'. So I end up threatening the bank with Conspiracy to Defraud and they refund me two of the five years of errant charges and I closed my account. I eventually get another XBL account, but I only use prepaid cards because I'll be damned if Microsoft gets their hands on another credit card of mine.
does phil pay into social security?
Most likely no. Automatic deductions like FICA are generally taken out of your gross pay by your employer and set aside/sent to the feds on your behalf. Phil is his own employer, and we already know how well he does 'set money aside for future bills' by his Constant Tax Distress.