Exactly which court do you believe will allow you to sue for lost wages incurred while attending court? As far as I can tell - none.

Search around and reply back.

You typically do not get to be reimbursed for expenses incurred with court costs including time off and time that you spent preparing your case. Besides this, of course, what reasonable person would think that the average joe could in any fashion claim 400/hour and 2k per day for court even if they did allow it? At the median household income of 40k usd a year, and 260 working days assuming no vacation time, that would make the average persons entire day worth only 153 and his two hours only a total of 40.

As I stated, though, no small claims court is going to award any damages based on you having to sue someone.

I think, still though, you are missing the point. You are not going to go to court - or really even an arbiter - for 12 dollars. You are going to call and complain, maybe tweet about it, or just eat it. No reasonable person is going to think that going to court for 12 dollars is something that sounds like a good idea. The end result will be that there is little oversight for the companies in this case and little to no ability for the consumer to stop these blatant abuses.