The Fine Print

For many years, details encoded in fine print have been subject of much contention, argument and the inevitable frustration. It seems, the substance of the contract is concealed inconspicuously in fine print. Each time there is a crucial issue about the service/product, resolution is sourced by fine print. Doubtful whether or not the increase in fees was stipulated in the contract? Read the fine print and you will be sufficiently enlightened. Baffled why you are suddenly being charged for service fees? The fine print can provide you with the answer. Such is the power of fine print, that contract executors won many legal battles and were awarded punitive damages with the argument, "Read the fine print."

The details in the normal print however, cannot answer these questions. Further, it is deficient of crucial facts. Information in the normal print will not explain to you that you need to do x in order to qualify for y. It will not point out that service a is not automatic but it's something that you have to request for specifically. That in order to avoid paying x amount of fees you have to do y. In general, nothing in the normal print will save you from a future, punishing headache except for providing you proof of your poor choice.

It is therefore unsurprising why details in the normal print are rarely the crux of any complaints or disputes. No customer complaints are easily resolved by referring to the normal print. I'm pretty sure that the customer service representatives hardly use this argument against a disgruntled customer: Read the normal print. And this is precisely because the normal print is merely a decoy used by contract-pushers to distract you from the trap disguised in fine print. Had you known what you were getting into, courtesy of fine print, you wouldn't have gotten into it in the first place.

Everything that we ever need and want to know about a contract, which will help us deliberate on its merits and demerits is in the fine print. For putting up with this dysfunctional system for so long, we deserve to get a contract in which the fine print is in normal print and the normal print in fine.

Let us push for the upliftment and empowerment of the normal print and for once, put value and significance in reading the normal print.