Just signed up for a new service and clicked on the terms of service to see them; I’m masochistic that way. The culprit today is Freshbooks, but they’re by no means unique.
At 3230 words, and with an average reading speed of 230 words per minute, that’s 14 minutes of lovely legalese. For services to be easy to use, we try to shave seconds of the signup process and some companies think they can demand 14 minutes of my time for this shit?
I know it’s CYA for them to have these terms. Yet enough companies have absurdly bad clauses in their TOS that I feel dirty every time I click “accept” without reading. What’s buried in those terms that could hurt me?
Considered as part of the user experience, it’s frankly baffling that companies continue to demand our time and leaving us fearful of their intentions.
4 comments ↓
I’m no lawyer but I doubt these have any weight in court. I’m curious to know if there is any jurisprudence.
It would surprise me if they did, which only serves to make them more obnoxious - the whole thing seems like a make-work project for lawyers
My terms of use weigh in at a whopping 90 words.
http://felix-cat.com/terms/
Privacy policy is also short and sweet at 86 words:
http://felix-cat.com/privacy/
However, my software’s EULA has a fairly big “not fit for any particular purpose” spiel…
I’ve deleted my share of commercial messages on this blog, and my first instinct reading Ryan’s comment was to delete. Check it out: they should serve as an example of clued-in behaviour.
Well done.
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