The truth about small print

T & Cs are a glaring anachronism that are mostly set up to catch consumers unawares. The amount of technical detail can be a nightmare to interpret, and the legal jargoneze is worded in such a way that it often requires a lawyer to deduce the exact meaning. To give an example, Orange are selling Broadband, which they 'claim' is 'unlimited ' subject to fair usage'. The telephone sales people say it is unlimited outright and half the price most of us pay. But there's a huge and very unfair catch. They send out warning letters/emails to customers who exceed 40Gb per month usage even just off-peak AND they throttle broadband speeds drastically daytime, evenings and off-peak for people who download a lot of films, games, watch streamed TV or video or play games online a lot. Yet do they spell this out in their 'fair usage' small print - YOU BET THEY DON'T . . . their small print just states that they have a 'fair' usage policy, WITHOUT specifying ANY detail . . . Even detailed small print can catch people out though, and OFTEN DOES . . . The trouble here is like prices 'from' with the 'from' in very small print, as in MEANT to catch people out. Additional contract details should spell out EXACTLY what the company's usual policy is, without catch all legal terms that could take very many hours to sift through! Credit card terms could be put into a VERY few sentences, such as:- We may on notifying you vary interest rates, and if we do this, you have the right to end the agreement. You agree to make regular minimum payments of at least 2% of the balance. If £1500 is paid back at minimum payments, it will take 289 months (24 years 1month) at present interest rates to clear the debt and interest charges. Interest is charged monthly on outstanding balances at 1.3% (23.59% APR). [if the interest is increased to 1.35% monthly this equals 36.6% annually] You can see from the above that credit card companies can make VAST amounts by a small adjustment to the monthly rate charged, as it is compound interest, compounded monthly. If it isn't on one contract page, and written in normal (as in size 12 font) it SHOULDN'T BE INCLUDED, and OUGHT TO have NO legal effect!

Sometimes, small print can often contradict your statutory rights. It is basically a game of ignorance, and knowing what your rights are. A recent example was where I was issued a new set of T&Cs, stating that my annual holiday entitlement was 20 days plus long service days. Needless to say, the statutory minimum for someone working 40 hours over a five day period is 28 days a year. When I informed my employer, they babbled something about bank holidays, and when I informed the Union (USDAW), they said my entitlement was a statutory right, and there was no reason to ask my employer to ammend my T&Cs. The problem with this is that if someone else comes along, who is ignorant of their rights, the company could effectively be cheating someone out of 8 days holiday. This beggars another question. Why do we have to abide by T&Cs when shopping. Isn't it obvious that the merchandise belongs to the store until paid for in full? What happened to the good old bartering mechanism whereby we gave something (cash) in return for something else (goods). Even the big supermarkets now apply T&Cs to all their shoppers the moment they step onto the premises. Everything we, as consumers, do is governed by Terms and Conditions, which is the small print. They say it is to protect themselves from us, but to be honest, it is to ensure that they feel no inconvenience whatsoever, and have us over a barrel.

A few contracts I have read have had glaring errors in them. I think of small print as a game to catch them out. I had a work contract that referred to section 4.0: there was no section 4.0 (Can't sign that, you'll have to re-issue please - response: well no one else noticed it in the last X years we've had the contract... And?) I ordered a new creditcard once and was turned down on their percentage offer and given a much higher one. After reading through the small print I noticed spelling, grammar and unclear terms. So I highlighted these and returned the form saying than can keep their higher % CC if they can't even get the small print right. A few days later a replacement card arrives with the first offerred percentage rate - I didn't use the % facility and didn't use the card much either... :)