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Scientists hit with massive bills after speaking at COVID-19 ‘webinars’

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Re: Scientists hit with massive bills after speaking at COVID-19 ‘webinars’

#41

Post by ghaff »

keltex wrote: post #19

Reminds me of a SPAM email we get quite frequently, the "World Company Register". The attached PDF reads, "To update your company profile, please print, complete and return this form. Updating is free of charge. Only sign if you want to place an insertion." Then at the bottom in tiny type it says that you've agreed to a 3 year insertion at 995 Euro per year. I can see small businesses easily falling for this.

Yeah, this isn't really about the signatures rabbit hole this thread has gone down. I've spoken at well over 100 events (and many webinars/videos) and it's totally routine as a speaker, or even as an attendee, to click through all sorts of routine terms and conditions like codes of conduct, agreement for photos/videos to be used for marketing purposes, and probably various other things. If there were some buried condition about payment after the event, I could easily miss it because it would be so unexpected. (An actual number would hopefully jump out at me but it would be so unexpected it might not if it were carefully hidden.)

Re: Scientists hit with massive bills after speaking at COVID-19 ‘webinars’

#42

Post by EGreg »

bdjeudug wrote: post #8
baz00 wrote: post #2

Someone did this recently to me i.e. showed me something I'd signed which I didn't. Fortunately this lead to their demise as I am friends with their manager which was unknown by the party in question. Historically I tend to try something on with employment contracts too - I return an unsigned copy to the company. Only 1 out of 6 companies I worked for didn't just stick it in a filing cabinet and forget about it. Ulti…

You’re intentionally returning unsigned contacts to employers hoping they don’t notice? Seeing how you’re first action in each of your new jobs is done in bad faith I think I see why you’ve had to fill out six of them…

How does a handwritten signature prove anything? They are so easy to forge.

I always wondered WHY ARE PEOPLE IN THE US ASKED TO SIGN A RECEIPT WHEN THEY PAY BY CREDIT CARD? I can draw literally any scraggles and they’ll accept it. Are they supposed to compare to the signature I put on my card?

Re: Scientists hit with massive bills after speaking at COVID-19 ‘webinars’

#43

Post by gabereiser »

readams wrote: post #38
keltex wrote: post #19

Reminds me of a SPAM email we get quite frequently, the "World Company Register". The attached PDF reads, "To update your company profile, please print, complete and return this form. Updating is free of charge. Only sign if you want to place an insertion." Then at the bottom in tiny type it says that you've agreed to a 3 year insertion at 995 Euro per year. I can see small businesses easily falling for this.

If you register a trademark, you'll get multiple fake bills in the physical mail for hundreds of dollars to similarly record the trademark in various "registers." The fine print says it's not a bill but a solicitation, but of course it's just a scam in reality.

Or a patent, or register a company. These vultures just want to prey on the uninformed or gullible business owners who are just trying to make a living. I received “notices” of “dues” to several different “agencies” for my company’s listing. When I wrote back that all I needed was a federal id number and a business registration on file with the clerk, they stopped harassing me. One of these fake bills was $4,000 for a DUNS registration. Wow. Just wow.

Re: Scientists hit with massive bills after speaking at COVID-19 ‘webinars’

#45

Post by ghaff »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #40
ghaff wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to do a one-off brokerage (where I don't have a personal representative) transfer fairly recently and, although they loosened up a bit during COVID, they were back to basically requiring me to show up at a brokerage branch in person. In theory, I could have gotten a Medallion Signature from my bank but it turned out they couldn't do it at my local branch and getting their central system to do it failed, so I ju…

A passport, or some other difficult-to-forge document, could be used right?

That's how it works in the US. You show the notary your passport or driver's license, they go "Yup, looks like you," you sign the doc in their presence, and they apply their stamp.

Re: Scientists hit with massive bills after speaking at COVID-19 ‘webinars’

#46

Post by Jnr »

casmike wrote: post #21
baz00 wrote: post #2

Someone did this recently to me i.e. showed me something I'd signed which I didn't. Fortunately this lead to their demise as I am friends with their manager which was unknown by the party in question. Historically I tend to try something on with employment contracts too - I return an unsigned copy to the company. Only 1 out of 6 companies I worked for didn't just stick it in a filing cabinet and forget about it. Ulti…

Some countries have electronic signatures linked to biometric IDs. Various devices can then be used to verify the signer's natural identity when signing documents online, like a mobile phone (both smart and dumb). I lived in a country like this and all my electronic signatures were linked to my natural person. Most documents were signed this way - from rental agreements to tax returns. It was very uncanny to start us…

Whole EU and EEZ has standard approved verified electornic signature format. So in EU even cross country signing is possible.

Re: Scientists hit with massive bills after speaking at COVID-19 ‘webinars’

#47

Post by mistrial9 »

jawns wrote: post #36
petesergeant wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I tend to try something on with employment contracts too - I return an unsigned copy to the company. So you email it back without comment, which shows you received it and understood what it was, and then started work… I suspect that’s binding in many jurisdictions, and the lack of an actual signature is simply an inconvenience

What if they crossed out a few clauses and signed, and the employer never noticed. Are you saying that because they begin working for the company, that represents the company's tacit acceptance of the modifications to the contract?

years ago I made a habit of making small changes to contracting agreements. The net results off the top of my head? most contracts sent were written for one side, not both sides, making some changes to defend my side simple self-defense (I didn't change the compensation terms); I only got the changes accepted two out of three times or so; when the tides of tech changed, I was the first to be left out.. it seems in hindsight that this was some kind of "larval state" for me.. I had to either get more authority in writing to become stable, or, be replaced by compliant, more desperate, more outsourced "talent" that could do specific tech work. As an intellectual, I went back to school, and lost the chance to embed and define authority in contractual relationships at the same time.

Re: Scientists hit with massive bills after speaking at COVID-19 ‘webinars’

#48

Post by arcbyte »

EGreg wrote: post #42
bdjeudug wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re intentionally returning unsigned contacts to employers hoping they don’t notice? Seeing how you’re first action in each of your new jobs is done in bad faith I think I see why you’ve had to fill out six of them…

How does a handwritten signature prove anything? They are so easy to forge. I always wondered WHY ARE PEOPLE IN THE US ASKED TO SIGN A RECEIPT WHEN THEY PAY BY CREDIT CARD? I can draw literally any scraggles and they’ll accept it. Are they supposed to compare to the signature I put on my card?

The signature is just a physical manifesting of assent. It's presence is indicative that you've agreed to what you're signing.

Signature comparison is a line of defense.

More broadly, There's a whole set of practices that assume a relationship. You scoff at signatures, but in their heyday, my local banker knew me and knew my signature and he could spot a general forgery or even unusual patterns. Every economic transaction I engaged in came with a relationship that helped mitigate fraud.

Even voting in the US today carries remnants of this. If you go to a small town to vote, you know the election workers and they know you. There's no need for an ID and there's no question of fraud. Everybody knows everybody. If you try to vote and nobody knows you, if you've got the paperwork, you'll get a smile and you'll vote, but you can bet your ballot is flagged for extra scrutiny afterwards.

We need more of this system in the modern world.

Re: Scientists hit with massive bills after speaking at COVID-19 ‘webinars’

#49

Post by ClumsyPilot »

asnyder wrote: post #22
keltex wrote: post #19

Reminds me of a SPAM email we get quite frequently, the "World Company Register". The attached PDF reads, "To update your company profile, please print, complete and return this form. Updating is free of charge. Only sign if you want to place an insertion." Then at the bottom in tiny type it says that you've agreed to a 3 year insertion at 995 Euro per year. I can see small businesses easily falling for this.

Still surprises me that tactics like these are legal. There shouldn't be a concept of fine print... The whole notion is ripe for abuse. Same with elder scams. Too many potential avenues for scams via contracts.

the concept of fine print, i believe, is to provide more detail on terms you already agreed to. Like "what happens if the delivery is late"

It is not to introduce entirely new terms, like "actually you have to pay for this"

Re: Scientists hit with massive bills after speaking at COVID-19 ‘webinars’

#50

Post by pas »

nkozyra wrote: post #27
johnbellone wrote: post #12

The answer is if it isn’t notarized I didn’t sign it. Go away. And then I submit a copy of one the judge signed as evidence.

That's a nice answer but I don't think that prevents you from spending money on arbitration or their getting a default judgement against you.

do they even have jurisdiction? have the speakers agreed to arbitration? otherwise it's just more spam.

edit: ah, okay, so they signed a "license agreement", which is basically a scam. welp.

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