-DC

Just think about all the software agreements you have clicked I Agree too over the year. Read the fine print in them? Focus on the details can make or break you Glad to see a company making it easier.

Relax Bethany, we’re not world-haters here. We just believe that it pays to “trust, but verify”.

I remember the first time I bought a house, and insisted on seeing all paperwork at least 24 hours prior to closing. When I questioned some of the paragraphs, I was told “Those are boilerplate from the form we use. We can take them out if you like.” Needless to say, I had them taken out and didn’t give up my right to rescission post-inspection (which led to a $10,000 price reduction when it was discovered the finished basement had been completed without County permits) or right to final walk-through the day before closing (to check for vandalism and to ensure fixtures hadn’t been changed or removed), just to give a few examples.

I’ve had much the same experience with car purchase contracts (which may include extra costs for services you may not need/want). If you read the mouse print, and ask to have things changed or deleted, a lot of the time the answer will be “yes”.

You gotta read the mouse print, to avoid mouse droppings.

From many years in the mortgage business I’ve learned that fine print DOES matter, even and especially if the people you’re doing business with tell you it doesn’t.

For this reason, I think credit cards are becoming increasingly dangerous for the average consumer. That 63 page cc agreement is no joke. There’s no way to know what most of that means, and that means you’re at a disadvantage in the event of a discrepancy.

It said, and I quote: “Points don’t expire. Just fly JetBlue or use your JetBlue Card from American Express® at least once within a 12 month period.”

So in other words… points totally expire. Ugh. Strangely enough, the weasely wording made my desire to fly JetBlue plummet!

I’m gonna check out that Big Bang Theory one, love that show.

Also, people fall for that IQ Quiz scam? I thought everyone knew never to enter your phone number/CC#/SSN/mailing addy unless it was a trusted site.

I had a “mouse print” like experience yesterday actually, I hope you don’t mind my sharing it.
It’s about groceries.

I was shopping for cocoa powder and looked at the no Name brand (yes, that’s the brand name) 500g box, and looked at the contents (I became vegetarian relatively recently and realised there is animal flesh in things you wouldn’t expect, so I just check everything now).
That’s how I realised the sodium content. The ingredients listed “cocoa, sodium”.
I looked at their smaller box (250g), which did not have any sodium whatsoever.
The 500g box listed a content of 35mg salt for 3g (3000mg) of their powder (so, about 1,2%).
Now, you’re going to tell me, that’s not that much. But that still means that in their 500g box, there is 6g of salt that they added as a filler.
They don’t have any in the smaller box, with no other indication anywhere on the label that the two products are different.

The smaller box was more expensive (relatively), but that’s what we took. We don’t need any salt in our cocoa powder.

It might seem nothing to you (barely over 1%), but I’m wondering how much money they save up that way, over the thousands of boxes they must sell.

Ridiculous, but that’s the world we live in until a politician statesman stands up for tort reform.

My girlfriend was buying flowers for her grandma for Mother’s Day, and she filled out a form for a “discount.” Turned out, it was some kind of scam service purporting to offer more discounts — yet they charged every month for it!!

It’s unfortunate that these con artists have structured their business to rip people off. Bad Karma. That’s not exactly serving anyone, is it?