Fine print

My beef today, is with businesses that send out applications to consumers to become a customer but with a contract and if you agree to become one, then they will send you the contract papers. There’s where the fun begins.

After you have read the front of the contract, then they say "conditions on reverse" side. Fine. You turn the paper over and this is what you see. A big pile of garbage that’s written in fonts so small that people get discourage just looking at it. Those papers ends up in the garbage where they belong.

The size of those fonts are about a 4 or 5 and when you get almost a full page of it, who wants to read that?  If you have to get a magnifying glass to read it, it's too much of a hassle. I know when I get something like this, in my mind it begs the question, "what are they trying to hide?" Yes, I guess some do try and hide some conditions and if you didn’t read those conditions then it could cost you quite a bit for breaking the contract.

The government has all kinds of stupid laws.  Why don’t they come out with a law that would obligate these businesses to use fonts of at least 7 or 8?  I guess then we would hear a lot of complaints from these businesses saying "yes but with that size it would take too much space." The answer to these people could well be don’t write so much bull to entrap people.

Credit cards are good for that. This morning I received and application from MBNA and full page of conditions and I’m happy to say that it was added to the recycling bin. The fonts on that page was no bigger then the size of a dog's fleas.

I say to those business if you have nothing to hide then put your conditions in print that people can read and include less bull and you just might attract more customers or clients if people notice that your not trying to put anything over on them with those little pitiful fonts.

That is my beef for today.

Have a good day.