Fine print. Details. They can really screw us if we don’t pay attention.
These 15 people know what I’m talking about. They got on Reddit to share the times when they actually DID look at what they were about to sign… and saved themselves A LOT of heartache.
1. Read. The. Contract.
Bought a car and they offered bi-weekly payments if you signed up. Read the contract and there were no extra fees so it seemed like a no-brainer. After a few months, I compared my payments to the reduction of the principal and it looked like an entire payment and a half was missing. When I called to inquire about it, I was told that the $750 was an enrollment fee.
My jaw dropped. I never would have signed up for that fee for something I could do on my own for free.
Went back, pulled out the paperwork and found that there was never an enrollment fee disclosed. The line for the amount was left blank. Sent the contact back to the company and they honored it.
2. Sneaky States
I was offered an opportunity to contract with the state where I live. They had a clause in the boilerplate that said if they paid me within 10 days of receiving my invoice they could cut the amount they paid me by 10%. I brought it up to the person contracting with me and she had no idea the term was in there.
Not only had she never had anyone complain about it, she had never read the boilerplate herself.
I got her to remove it and the contract went well…though it did take far more than 10 days to get paid.
3. We Can Spy On You. Just Because.
This was back in 2002-ish, when it wasn’t entirely uncommon for people to not even have their own e-mail address, and it was basically unheard of for people to have work computers they took home or even the ability to work remotely at all.
So the company I worked for came out with a new computer use policy that was rather poorly written and became overly broad. What they meant to say “We can read your 1) business or 2) personal e-mails that use 1) our computers, 2) our physical network, 3) our digital network.”
It was to cover themselves if you, say, got issued a laptop to go on a business trip (which my position would never be) and you signed into your personal e-mail from that laptop when you were off-site and IT sniffed the text then they wouldn’t get in trouble.
What they actually said was “We can read your e-mails, personal or business, on our network or not, on our machines or not.” Obviously they weren’t going to hack into my personal e-mail that never saw a whiff of their machines or network to read my e-mails, but the policy they wanted me to agree to gave them the right to do it.
I refused to sign without striking out and re-writing the offending bits to say what they actually meant. They refused to accept that correction.
Eventually they decided that the original computer use policy I signed as a new hire was sufficient and I didn’t have to sign the new policy. Apparently that was an easier sell to corporate than me fixing their oops.
4. What A Rip!
The AT&T next program is pretty trash. I sent both mine and my wife’s phone in via UPS to trade in because we got new phones. I tried to trade them in via the store but was told I had to send them. I had tracking numbers saying they were delivered but AT&T insisted that the phones never arrived.
I paid close to $400 bucks after calling several times and trying to talk to a manager for hours. I paid it to make it go away and I had the money. I felt extremely ripped off and switched to Verizon shortly after.
5. Smoking Gun…
Almost got an apartment that I thought was non-smoking, but definitely wasn’t non-smoking.
The website and the sales rep both said it was non-smoking, but…
The lease clearly states that older tenants with legacy leases could still smoke.
When confronted, the sales rep refused to tell me whether I would be near units with legacy leases or when the apartment complex switched over from legacy leases.
I don’t react very well to being willfully mislead and that felt like a case of being willfully mislead.
Thank God I looked at the contract.
6. That’ll Teach Her!
Nothing like anyone else’s story, as it’s more funny than surprising. Our school hands out these handbooks with every little rule so that they can tell you to “check the handbook” when you disagreed. Everyone’s least favorite section was on cell phones. Phones had to be off and in lockers during school hours.
Last year, the teachers decided to strike and were forced to come back, so they protested by not letting students into homerooms until 7:45, as that was when their shift technically started. This means that because homeroom started at 7:45, so from 7:30 until then, it technically wasn’t “school hours”. Pick up on it yet?
My friend’s girlfriend got her phone taken at 7:43 and was going to get suspended until I let her in on the secret. She told the office and she got it back alongside an apology from the teacher. That was probably the most justifying thing I’ve ever seen in that school which can be a good or bad thing, depending on how you look at it.
Just to see if I was right, I asked my history teacher who was studying school centered law. He said I was entirely right and that he, even as a teacher, has given teachers cr*p for that stuff from the beginning. It was kind of amazing to hear that I was right and had outsmarted a teacher and to have it confirmed.
(Side effects may include: teacher hating you for cheating the system and being a smart *ss)
7. A LOT More Money
I was buying a car and the woman kept trying to get me to buy the extended warranty and service plan. She kept acting like not getting them would be the biggest mistake of my life, and I was like, “Are you telling me my brand-new car is going to s*** the bed in three years?”
After some more trying to convince me she printed a contract and told me where to sign. I spent 15 minutes reading it in front of her despite her insistence that it was just standard legalize, and lo and behold it had me agreeing to an extra $5,000 getting the extended warranty and service plan. She feigned ignorance (“Oh, I thought you finally decided on those,”) then made a sad show of ripping up the contract and printing a new one.
8. Overtime Run-Around
So around 2009 I was working in a warehouse as a warehouseman/local delivery driver.
Wasn’t a bad job but it was salaried instead of by the hour which is unusual for that industry but when you had 30 min of overtime a month I was happy enough.
2008-9 with the economy and building trade gone to sh*t, we all had to sign to take a 10% pay cut or they’d have to pay more people off, I accepted my fate but I never signed the paperwork.
Few months later boss says at 5 minutes to close he needs me to go make a rush delivery. I said sure I want time and a half, he argued that I’m salaried, I argued that if he can change the terms of the contract then so can I and if he can show me where I agreed to the pay cut then I’d make the delivery.
After checking then the next day he gave me the paperwork to sign again, I added in writing that all overtime will be time and a half while wages are cut and asked him to sign and return a copy. Funnily enough I never did get a copy nor was I asked to do overtime again.
9. Sleaze For Days
This was in China. I signed up to work as an English teacher. There was an agency that handled the contracts, so they sent me a contract, I read it, it was ok, so I signed it.
In the contract one clause said I could have any three days off with pay during each semester for whatever reason. So when late spring rolled around I checked out the summer schedule which had all kinds of holidays and irregular scheduling dispersed, and I realized that the way my schedule and the school’s schedule lined up so that during two weeks, I had only three days of work, and they just happened to be my busiest days.
So I told the administrator I would be taking those three days off, as per the contract, which would give me two whole weeks off. She said OK. I reminded her every week for two months about this, she said ok every time.
So I planned a vacation, two weeks of sight seeing. I even went to Mongolia by the trans-siberian railway.
I come back two weeks later to the last week of work, and the administrator is fuming! “Where have you been the last two weeks!?” she asks. I tell her I have been off, as I had told her 8 times already and which she agreed to. “You can’t do that!” she claims. So I calmly show her the clause in the contract that clearly state I can, and she is flabbergasted.
The contract the school had with the agency didn’t have that clause at all. So the contract I signed and the one the school signed didn’t match. The agency had added and removed clauses in both the Chinese and English version in order to get both parties to sign, so the contracts didn’t match at all.
Also while we compared contracts, the administrator grudgingly mentioned how much money she paid for me and for that price I better show up and yada yada. “Excuse me, how much did you say?” Turns out the agency charged the school 5 times more for my salary than what they actually paid me. They just pocketed 80%. So the school paid through the nose and I got a sh*tty salary and no one of us knew. No wonder the admin was so b*tchy.
But the admin let me be and went after the agency instead. They never renewed contracts with them after that. So I didn’t get into trouble at least, but it would have been nice with a 500% raise, had I been able to read Chinese.
10. Ewwwwwwwwwwwww!
Old day spa I worked at tried to get me to sign a new contract that basically said that if x amount of products (skin care) were found stolen/missing at any time, the amount total would be divided between the therapists and taken out of our wages until the amount was paid back.
Told the girls how f*cked this was and that this is what insurance and stock take is for. Got written up for telling the girls the problems with the contract and that I was being disobedient for not signing.
I told them to shove it and to f— off.
They were already doing shady sh*t and I kept getting “written up” every time I brought up that “that’s illegal”.
This spa chain is owned by Thais and were operating this hotel and spa in Australia, but running on thai laws, not aussie laws. I was also the only qualified therapist there and the only aussie.
I was constantly butting heads with the manager, and also cutting a lot of corners to make sure she made her bonus.
The laundry bill had gone from 1000 p/m to 100 p/m. The common complaint from clients were “stains on sheets/towels/linen”.
SO F*CKING GROSS. I made a point that if I was closing to strip the beds and change sheets.
11. sh^tty Kitties
I had a pet service that would come and check on our cats when we were gone. We moved down the street, and they came over to get new keys, check out the new location and so on. They also wanted me to sign an “updated contract.”
The new contract was almost exactly the same except listed a long section on “Non-disparagement” which essentially said they could sue me for however much they wanted if I left ANY bad review AND pay for their attorney’s fees. (See here)
Obviously unenforceable, but definitely didn’t sign it. After talking to the owner for like 20 minutes on the phone (yes, I mentioned the Streisand effect in passing), they agreed to just use the previous contract. As I was going away in a few days, I used them for that trip and then never used them again.
Turns out they later tried to sue a couple for $1 million. It got dismissed quickly (because duh), but having to deal with that wouldn’t be my favorite thing. https://www.dallasnews.com/news/courts/2016/08/30/1m-lawsuit-plano-couple-one-star-yelp-review-dismissed
12. Capitalism 101
I work for a reasonably well known cellphone company that specializes in low cost service with no contract. That’s all fine and dandy but people often don’t want the low to mid tier phones we offer cheaply and gravitate towards the more expensive phones for quality. Naturally… the prices on apple products and upper tier droids are up there and that’s where the bullsh*t comes into play.
We partner with progressive leasing (a separate company) and you only pay $49.99 that day to start the lease. Cool right? No….absolutely not. After applying in store they authorize you for a certain amount of money and blah blah, you get your phone (+accessories if you want) and AFTER the sale the customer reads the leasing terms.
Say someone gets an iPhone 8+ which we’re currently selling for $799.99. You have a few options for leasing ranging from a 3 month buyout option to spreading it out over a year or two. Most opt for the year because it sounds reasonable but in reality the company ends up charging you over $2000USD thanks to their insane interest rates…even if you knock it out in 3 months with the buyout you still pay them an extra $250 or so. It’s utterly insane and takes advantage of people in a terrible way.
TLDR Companies charge crazy interest rates but only show the nonsense after the sale is processed. Basically doubling the cost of phones.
13. That Is Not A Contract…
Some woman rear ended me and wanted to pay for everything in cash to avoid going through insurance.
I was fine with that, but it ended up being like 3000 dollars in damage from a minor bump.
She paid for it, and then tried to get me to sign a sheet of paper that said she paid for it and she was no longer liable. One of the lines in the contract stated that I was accepting responsibility for the accident.
I never signed it, she was already pissing me off telling me she isn’t going to pay for X and Y and we should go to her shoddy *ss family repair guy to fix it for a fraction of the cost.
14. Don’t Try And Scare Me!
Went to sign up at a martial arts school that had tae kwon do and brazilian jujitsu under the same roof.
I was handed a contract and told, “it’s just like all the other 12 month contracts out there”.
For those that don’t know, usually you sign an agreement to pay in advance so that the owner of the school can budget month to month. There is also, usually, a discount for paying in advance. If you pay month to month, and break the contract, then you can be sure that you won’t be getting hit by anything in court as not having to teach you is not an injury in most cases. You don’t pay, they don’t teach, nobody is out anything, especially when you’re talking about less than 1 grand in tuition.
This contract, said that I was financing a year of lessons through another company. I noped out immediately. I assumed (and later found out I was right) that the owner of the school owned the financing company as well.
Since the finance company paid the martial arts school for the year in advance, the finance company was out of the money and did have an injury to claim in court if you broke the contract. I told the owner of the school that I wasn’t interested, and he got belligerent with me and asked what I would do if I was attacked by somebody that knew martial arts. I told him, “I’ll shoot them”, and then I walked out.
I’ve had to break martial arts school contracts before because of moving or injury. This guy was just shady as f*ck all the way around.
15. Why Unions Are Needed
Not so much a “read the contract” but at an corporate induction training session for a cruise liner, someone from head office said that we, as performers, had specific privileges pertaining to being officers despite it being our first contract for that company. When we boarded, we received further training and were informed none of the information delivered on land was applicable to us, and that theres no chance it was even mentioned…
That is until one of our singers went to on board HR having recorded the session without anyone’s say so. She broke a lot of bull sh*t data protection rules within the company and they threatened to fire her. But we all threatened to walk for their treatment of us.
So we got some ridiculously petty telling off, and all our privileges reinstated.
Glorious.
16. Gouging You For NO Reason
Not sure if this counts, but Spectrum (like most big telecom) sent me an email saying that they are increasing by bill by $10/mo.
When I called in they tried to convince me I was on a promotional period, which I was not since I was already a customer of three years and read to them my bill and customer agreement with dates. After explaining to them that they are, indeed, lying to me and being transferred around to three people within Cancellations they miraculously found a way to reduce my bill by $15 going forward.
Even though they backed down it makes me sad to think about those who aren’t apt enough, like my grandparents, to notice these moneygrabs and how much money these companies make by pulling this.
17. Get. That. Money. Son!
My HR told me that I did not get paid for jury duty.
I talked to my dad and took his advice to review my contract.
I replied to HR with a screenshot of my contracting saying I get paid.
Have you ever been in a similar situation?
Share your story in the comments!