31–40 of 245 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It must have gotten to the point by now that the mere length of a privacy policy, or EULA, is enough to convince the court that there effectively is no policy or no agreement, signed, seal broken or not.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contracts_of_adhesion#Contracts...
The official at the Polish registration office gave me a photocopied Belgian registration form and told me to fill that in, fill the price and sign for the seller (in other words, forge the seller's signature).
I've had various people come up to me with company offers and asking me to sign things, which, after I've read, I said, for example "I'm not authorizing you to use my email to send me things, so I'll strike this clause out". People (including the person who handed me the agreement) looked at me as if I were the most pedantic person in the world, or as if I were trying to make things fall upwards.
It's very disconcerting, because nearly everyone treats contracts as a "take it or leave it" affair. Sure, when you're getting a new phone, the employee doesn't have the power to agree to alter the contract, but in many cases you can do it.
It's not exactly an isolated case. When I turned 18 I was presented with the same document. To my mother's dismay, I pointed out the flaws and then marked in the necessary negatives in pen to render the document useless before signing it. Since the other party (a member with legal power at the clinic) did not sign after me, I'm not sure the form is actually binding on either of us. Could somebody clarify what precede…
As you changed the document, it may or may not be binding. Effectively you offered them new terms, and I wouldn't like to speculate as to if they accepted them (e.g. by treating you).
Could you imagine at the extremes if you had been refused treatment because of your refusal to sign this document, to which you knew to be untrue, and to which they could not provide you with the policy. I studied law for four years (haven't qualified) , but I'm still not even sure on the liability on this one (if there is any at all in this hypothetical). It just shows how bureaucratic everything has become when a p…
This also comes to mind during mortgages and car loans. Often the closer will just hand you a stack of papers and say "you need to initial here, here, and here, sign here, here, and here" and then expect/anticipate the person to do just that without reading the agreement. The closer ought to know that the signer has not actually read the document and therefore the initials and signatures don't represent what they are meant to represent... that the person has READ the whole thing and mindfully agreed to it! Agh!
3,000 pages? Why would it need to be that long? Isn't that kinda extreme? I don't think any average person would even want to read that, and making a copy of that would just seem wasteful of paper... Couldn't they make it shorter?
I don't know how it is in the US, but here (Greece), most people aren't aware that you can modify contracts, or even that they're binding. I've had various people come up to me with company offers and asking me to sign things, which, after I've read, I said, for example "I'm not authorizing you to use my email to send me things, so I'll strike this clause out". People (including the person who handed me the agreement…
Unfortunately, this option is taken away from us in online transactions. There is no legally binding way to change the text of the contract, and you are even forced to tick these "I accept the terms of ..." check boxes before proceeding.
The worst bit about this is that most of these services then go on to take a big fat steamy dump on our personal rights and our privacy (I'm sure I don't need to give any examples here!), and there's nothing we can do because we agreed to the terms that were "clearly" laid out infront of us before we even used the service.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To which the reply is "That's a shame, you should train your staff".
Snappy "replies" might not hold as much weight in a legal setting as you imagine.