Originally Posted by
miller7796 I work in an industry that can be difficult to understand (health insurance) but in most cases, if you check you can find your easily find your answer. But again, for those who don't bother to check can only blame somebody else for their own failures.
Corporate guy here too. Let's be honest with the folks. A LOT of these boilerplate contracts and fine print gooblety gook within them are written by greedy lawyers and greedy executives to screw the public.
When Joe and Mary Consumer go into a cell store to get a new phone and have their 3 kids with them, they have neither the time or the patience to sit down and pull out their reading classes and call their attorney to go over a cell-phone contract. The concept is ridiculous. And it would be a waste of time anyway. No carrier rep has the ability (or training) to interpret contract language and/or to negotiate acceptance or modifications of any of it. If you dared to question a contract point, the carrier rep would tell you (politely) to sign the darn contract or get out of the store. There's no negotiation here. The concept is ridiculous.
So people sign these things without even knowing what they mean. It's really one of the things that's wrong with our culture. And it's one of the things that creates cynicism about American business in general.
I remember a negotiation class I once took. The principal idea the instructor taught was that a negotiation was a tw0-way process where both parties had the ability to negotiate. With these carrier contracts, there's no negotiation. You sign the d*amn things or you don't get a cell phone. The language could say that the carrier has the right to burn your house down. There's no negotiation you can do about any of the language in these things. You sign it or you don't get service. End of discussion.