Drowning in fine print

Contracts are everywhere. I am averaging multiple contracts per day. Is it realistic to expect consumers to read and understand so many contracts when the average person doesn't even read one book a year?



I just tried to purchase an item on Etsy (the artist/crafters-direct sales site). At checkout, I had to create an account and check a box saying that I agree with Etsy's terms and conditions. So I opened the terms and conditions. The main body is 26 sections 12 pages and over 4,000 words, with another 4 documents incorporated by reference, two of which were about as long as (or longer than) the actual terms and conditions.

I can't make the purchase without agreeing to the contract. I am not going to agree to a contract without reading it. I don't have time to read a 20+ page document to make a simple purchase. So no sale. I bet the seller would have preferred to have a sale.



The average adult supposedly reads 250-300 words per minute. The Etsy terms and conditions alone would take about 14 minutes. The T&C plus the other documents incorporated by reference total a staggering 12,422 words. At 300 words per minute, that is more than 40 minutes of reading, to buy a $15 tchotchke. I wish I were kidding. I wish this was rare. Nope. Ain't rare. Ain't reasonable, either. You can't even watch Better Off Ted without signing a contract. Come on. Doesn't the law already cover most of this stuff?



Instead of a traditional tv/cable box/vcr entertainment center, I have an entertainment computer. It can play regular and blu-ray DVDs, tune in television stations, and play web-based entertainment, including Hulu, Netflix, and YouTube. There is a small problem, though. Because the system is across the room (though on a large screen TV), we have our browser set to display text in "very large." Most TV websites are configured to use the exact font style and size that the designer specifies, without scaling. When we try to watch a show - say, on ABC.com (the absolute worst offender) - we have to agree to the terms and conditions. Except they're not legible from across the room when the web designer doesn't allow the text to scale to the browser settings. So we're supposed to agree to a binding contract that we cannot read. It is the equivalent of a 4-6 point font. If you printed a written contract that small, it would not be enforceable. Yet companies think that their web contracts will be enforceable because they look right on the designer's monitor!



When I take my car in for service, signing the front of the service contract means I agree to everything on the back of the contract. When I go to the doctor's office, same thing - I have to certify that I agree with their privacy policy, that I agree to assign insurance benefits to them, and a couple other contracts that they make me sign on a regular basis. They get pissy about "holding up the line" if I actually read the contracts before signing them, and they're shocked that I ask for a copy (I don't sign anything that I don't get a copy of). And then there's always some clause about my having received some notice, which I haven't received, and it's a problem to track down a copy for me. Oh, yes, the reaction I get when I insist on reading a contract before signing it, having a copy, asking questions - it is clear that 1) most people don't read the contract(s) and 2) most companies count on people not reading the contracts.



It is an insidious loop. Consumers don't read the contract, so companies develop their procedures around that - like presenting a contract to the consumer and allowing 5 seconds for the consumer to sign, any longer holds up the line or keeps an employee from returning to their important work (because dealing with a customer who is signing a contract isn't important) and then an average consumer tries to read the contract and gets socially slapped down for it, so he or she doesn't try to read contracts anymore.



Not me. I'm antisocial. If I sign a contract, I'm going to read it, and if that inconveniences the party requesting the contract - they should have considered the possibility that some people want to know what rights they're signing away. When I bought my first house with my first spouse, we sat down at closing and I read the mortgage contract. I read the purchase contract to make sure it was recorded correctly. I read every single thing I signed, and I reviewed the list of 360 payment amounts to make sure it gibed with what I THOUGHT I was signing. And every single person at the closing table made pointed jokes, then tapped their fingers, then told me I didn't need to read the contracts, then sighed deeply, then told me that NO ONE reads the contracts. Halfway through, my spouse picked up on the social cues for me to stop reading, and parroted the "I'm sure it's all correct, nobody reads it, just sign and move on" messages from the "professionals." (That's a big part of why I'm on my second spouse. I am more concerned with signing an accurate contract than with impressing the salespeople that I am "easy to get along with" when that means potentially signing away major rights, privileges, or dollars. That, and the fact that I'm a jackass who makes everybody uncomfortable by reading contracts and such.)



That's right, people who sign contracts without reading are not just taking huge risks, they are harming people who DO read contracts. Company lawyers get emboldened by the knowledge that consumers don't read the contract. So they put things into the contract that most consumers would not willingly agree to (like eBay's infamous "we are just a venue, if you get ripped of, tough tooties") and then they write 20-40 page contracts because, hey, nobody reads them anyway, so it isn't an inconvenience to the customer to deal with ENORMOUS long contracts.



So, no matter how responsible or persnickety (or whatever adjective YOU choose) you are about reading contracts, you have to share a world with the illiterates of the world (people who can read but don't read even when it's really important, may as well be illiterate so I'm lumping them in with people who actually can't read). How long would a company stay in business if they forced customers to sign a 20 page document before letting them buy something, if most customers actually read the contract? Stores would only be open on Sundays, because that would be the only day people had enough time to shop! Consumerism would die on the vine.

Now, the mortgage crisis has shown that a lot of people were swimming naked, contract-wise. I wonder if people are going to start paying more attention to what they're signing? If so, will they object to spending 40 minutes reading a contract for the privilege of buying something for less than $20? Will people hire lawyers to translate the terms and conditions on Twitter, or will they just say no? Maybe consumer contracts will go back to being sane, rational two-paragraph statements. Ah, I can dream.