You know what really frosts my flakes?
Changing terms and conditions.
Hardly a day goes by without some company, website or app sending me an email announcing “important updates” to its terms and conditions. Important to who?
Today’s message included a link to a page with 10,812 words and more than 90 additional links to other legal documents. That’s not a terms-and-conditions page. That’s a hostage situation with footnotes.
Who has time to read this nonsense?
And let’s be honest, none of it was written for normal human beings. It was written by lawyers for other lawyers who bill by the hour and use phrases like “heretofore” in casual conversation.
So what exactly are we supposed to do? Hire an attorney at $400 an hour before buying a lawn chair online?
“No thanks, honey. We can’t order paper towels until Gerald from the law firm finishes reviewing subsection 14B regarding arbitration procedures.”
A normal person would need nearly an hour just to read the silly thing carefully enough to understand it. And that’s assuming their eyes don’t glaze over after paragraph three when the document starts explaining how disputes must be settled by a retired goat farmer serving as a mediator in Delaware.
So what do people do? They scroll to the bottom like they’re trying to escape and click “Accept” just to get on with their lives.
That’s not agreement. That’s surrender.
What we need are real terms and conditions.
“We promise not to sell your data to every scammer with a Wi-Fi signal.”
“We’ll answer the phone within three minutes using a real human being who speaks the primary language of your country.”
“If we make a mistake, we’ll fix it without making you reset your password 14 times.”
Now those are terms I can understand and quickly agree with.
And another thing. If money is power, why are companies that want my money constantly telling me how I’m allowed to interact with them?
You can’t call, email, complain publicly, sue or breathe incorrectly near their app.
For centuries, people did business with each other just fine without needing to read a 100-page legal manifesto before buying socks.
You handed over your money. They handed over the product. If something went wrong, somebody named Frank fixed it. It was simple.
I’m Grandpa Grumpy and I’m way too old for this nonsense.