Fine Print

One of my pet peeves is when I enter into an agreement under the impression that all the terms were made clearly known to me, and then, the fine print distorts the terms of the agreement, usually to my disadvantage. Fine print is a tool designed for salesmen and other dealmakers to take advantage of the person agreeing to a contract. It unfairly makes use of the fact that people hurry through life and only skim through documents that they naively perceive to be straightforward. One time, I was considering signing up for Napster in order to download my music. I was about to purchase a subscription when I noticed the fine print in the agreement stating that all music I downloaded to my computer would be deleted if I ever were to cancel my subscription with Napster. That fine print was a deal breaker.

Yes, it is possible to read through all the fine print in every document. Ideally, we all would do that. However, fine print in contracts is often so long and dense – with most (but not all) of it being relatively meaningless – it becomes impractical to spend extra time reading it.

Advertising also utilizes fine print to more effectively sell products. Countless times, I have caught a glimpse of a sign from afar claiming something like: “50% OFF ALL STORE MERCHANDISE*”. Naturally, I would wander over to the store to check out the relatively cheaper goods, but once I would walk up closer to the sign, I would notice the asterisk next to the “MERCHANDISE” and find its twin at the bottom of the poster, claiming: “After an original purchase of $50.00.” The advertisement was clearly misleading, with the intention of drawing in potential consumers under false pretenses.

Often, the fine print contains fairly important information, such as disclaimers about safety or notices that render all responsibility on you, if you were to get injured while using that company’s product. In these cases, companies use fine print for their own protection, which consequently leaves consumers vulnerable to the risks of these products.

We talk in class about how often we are purposefully mislead or fed false information in these books we are reading. These tricks of writing blind us from determining the truth in the stories to the point where we forgo trying to discover what is true. Fine print behaves the same way. An attractive-looking contract or advertisement will draw us into a deal that is, in reality, skewed favorably toward the dealmaker, yet we fail to see this truth, because it remains hidden in the fine print.