SmallBizResource Blog -- Business Know-How

Small Print, Big Consequences

Posted by Janet Attard, Courtesy of Business Know-How Thursday, Jul 17, 2008, 08:24 AM ET

When was the last time you read all of the small print in the contracts you sign? Or, for that matter, all of the BIG print?

You know -- the paragraphs of stuff the legal folks put in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS, making what they theoretically want to emphasize impossible to read?

If you're like most folks, your eyes probably glaze over when you see hard-to-read paragraphs of legal details in contracts. Instead of reading the contract all the way through, you skim for the high points -- the points you know you should care about, like what something is going to cost you, or what you'll get out of the deal, or when something will be delivered. Everything else...well, it just looks too difficult to read. So you don't.

And, that, of course, is a mistake.

All that legal "gibberish" in the middle usually contains terms that you need to know about.

One of our Web site visitors just wrote to me this week, for instance, asking how he could get back $250 a merchant account provider took out of his bank account when he canceled his contract with the company two months early.

Unfortunately, there is probably nothing he can do at this point. Many merchant account providers include clauses in their contracts that allow them to charge a fee for early cancellation. "Early" is any date before the number of years or months specified in the contract. And "charging a fee" means taking the money out of your bank account, which they have access to as part of the contract.

When you take the time to read a contract before you sign it, you can try to get clauses like that changed. If a company wants your business badly enough, and the change is minor, (i.e., no early cancellation fee), they may agree to the change. But once you sign on that proverbial dotted line and start using the product or service, you'll have little luck getting things like early cancellation fees or other clauses you think are unfair changed.

What about an oral contract, one based on a good ol' fashioned handshake? Click here to find out whether one carries any weight should a dispute entail.

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