I just had to bring you the following, which is a blog detailing an April Fool’s prank which proved that people were not reading the terms and conditions they were signing up to:
Clearly, no harm has been done on this particular occasion, but what does this experiment tell us?
- Are we too trusting of people?
- Are we too busy to read what we are committing too?
- Are we so desperate to get these products that we will sign ANYTHING?
- Do we believe that clicking in the ‘Accept’ box is less binding than actually signing (it’s not!)?
- OR – do we simply know that if we do read it, it will all be gobbledegook anyway?
Of course, if nobody ever reads on-line terms and conditions for IT products, then this could have been proved by replacing the existing wording with what they (generally) really mean- ie ‘You have no rights, and we have no liability!’
Check out my earlier article: Do Terms and Conditions Really Matter if No-one Ever Reads Them? for a more serious discussion of this topic.
Tags: contract, terms and conditions
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