These terms and conditions
are unacceptable
C
omplicated terms and conditions are everywhere. When you
do stuff online – whether that’s buying insurance, installing
an app, or using a wifi hotspot – then every few days you’ll
be asked to ‘click to accept’ to say you’ve read pages of small print.
et how many of us really
Y
read the stuff?
Something of a stalemate seems
Here’s how we did it
Here’s what we found
* We gathered up a random sample
of 30 sets of terms and conditions
We spent days reading endless
reams of terms and conditions. (Not
to have occurred: companies
from all sorts of brands – from
something we wish to repeat, thank
typically say they’re ‘obliged to say
banks to supermarkets, software
you.) And for the most part, things
it all’ in order to ‘cover themselves’.
to services.
really were as bad as we’d expected:
Yet there also seems to be a tacit
acknowledgement that most people
don’t actually read Ts&Cs. (As an
April Fools’ Day prank a year or
two ago, GameStation even added a
clause into their terms and conditions
stating that ‘we now own your
1
* We worked out how long they
took to read. We did this simply
by using the average reading rate
of 250 words a minute.
* We worked out how difficult
they are to read. We did this by
immortal soul’. Only 12 per cent of
calculating the Flesch-Kincaid
their customers noticed.)
readability score of each set of
We decided to check: How long do
people actually spend reading the
small print? How long do they really
take to get through? How hard are
they to read? And is anybody doing
terms and conditions well?
terms and conditions. (Flesch-
dense paragraphs stuffed with long
sentences. Impenetrable legalese. And
often in a jumbled order, making it
difficult to find the pertinent points.
But it wasn’t all bad: there are
companies doing interesting and
helpful things. Which turns out
to be more important than you’d
expect. Because…
Kincaid measures how easy or
hard a piece of writing is to read,
and gives you a guide to what
education level someone needs
to be to understand the writing
clearly on a first reading.)
The shocker: people really
do read the small print
We asked 2,043 people how long they
spent reading the small print – and
9 per cent said they didn’t read
Ts&Cs at all. But the surprise to
us was that the average time turned
out to be 4 minutes 42 seconds.
2
Frankly, this was a much better
showing than we’d anticipated. We
think this is something companies
should be taking really seriously –
in a world where most brands obsess
over their customers’ ‘experience’,
here’s a point where you’ve got
your customers’ attention for nearly
five straight minutes. Terms and
But they’re not reading all
of them, by any means…
Four minutes 42 seconds is good
‘customer journey’.
a rule of thumb.)
Yet when we crunched the numbers
enough. We found that the average
on the terms and conditions, we
time it takes to read a set of terms
found that their readability score
and conditions in full is 28 minutes.
usually came out in the 30s. That’s
The table (at the bottom) shows the
about the same score as the Harvard
worst offenders we came across, with
Law Review, and equates to a
Vodafone taking a mind-boggling
university-level ‘reading age’.
three days – if you read all their 116
different sets of terms and conditions.
We think the challenge is clear: if
you sincerely expect your customers
to read your terms and conditions,
And it’s not certain that
people are understanding
them, either
Most business writing – even when
Terms and conditions
need to be considered
a serious stopping-off
point on every
‘customer journey’.
this is the figure that’s often used as
going, but it turns out it’s not nearly
conditions need to be considered a
serious stopping-off point on every
a ‘national average’ reading age,
dealing with complicated content
– should aim for a Flesch-Kincaid
score of around 65. That’s about
what The Economist magazine,
you should aim for a readability score
that means all your customers will
be able to understand them. (And
even if your customers are exclusively
Harvard law professors, do you
really want them to have to put the
same effort into understanding your
product or service as they would
reading academic literature, or
the BBC news website, and this
document that you’re reading now
Shakespeare?)
score. That equates to the ‘reading
The table shows the worst and best
age’ of a 13–14-year-old. (And while
of the terms we surveyed.
it’s an over-simplification to talk of
t their worst, they look
A
like this
Three shortest to read
Three easiest to read
Scottish & Southern Energy (4 mins)
Axa
(65.1)
remind you what legalese looks like.
LV
(6 mins)
BT
(64.6)
But just in case you’d forgotten,
Google
(7 mins)
E.ON
Three longest to read
Vodafone
We’re sure you don’t need us to
(55)
Three hardest to read
(3 days)
PayPal
(1hr 42 mins)
iTunes
(1 hr)
Brunel University
(16)
Moorfields Pharmecuticals
(25)
Vodafone
(26.9)
on the next page you can have a read
of this from Spotify:
What does your small print
say about your brand?
TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED
All in capitals?
STOP SHOUTING
AT ME!
BY LAW, IN NO EVENT WILL SPOTIFY, ITS
OFFICERS, SHAREHOLDERS, EMPLOYEES,
AGENTS, DIRECTORS, SUBSIDIARIES,
AFFILIATES, SUCCESSORS, ASSIGNS,
SUPPLIERS OR LICENSORS BE LIABLE
FOR (i) ANY INDIRECT, SPECIAL,
INCIDENTAL, PUNITIVE, EXEMPLARY
OR CONSEQUENTIAL (INCLUDING
LOSS OF USE, DATA, BUSINESS, OR
PROFITS) DAMAGES, ARISING OUT
OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE
Get hunting:
THE SPOTIFY SERVICE, THIRD PARTY
Ouch.
It broke the Flesch-Kincaid
score, with a minus
reading. That shows it’s
harder than the Harvard
Law Review.
APPLICATIONS OR THIRD PARTY
The main message is
APPLICATION CONTENT, REGARDLESS
buried here: ‘You can’t
OF LEGAL THEORY, WITHOUT REGARD
hold us liable for damages
TO WHETHER SPOTIFY HAS BEEN
if Spotify doesn’t work.’
WARNED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF THOSE
DAMAGES, AND EVEN IF A REMEDY
FAILS OF ITS ESSENTIAL PURPOSE;
(ii) AGGREGATE LIABILITY FOR ALL
Come again?
CLAIMS RELATING TO THE SPOTIFY
What on earth does ‘if a
SERVICE, THIRD PARTY APPLICATIONS
remedy fails of its essential
OR THIRD PARTY APPLICATION
purpose’ mean?
CONTENT MORE THAN THE AMOUNTS
PAID BY YOU TO SPOTIFY DURING THE
PRIOR THREE MONTHS IN QUESTION.
Did you get all that?
Yep, that’s all one sentence.
I wonder if anyone will read this small print? We took random samples of terms and conditions, terms of use, privacy statements and other small print
from these brands: Google, Amazon, Barclays Cycle Hire, Facebook, Spotify, Adobe Flash Player, Adobe Photoshop, Windows 7 Home Basic, E.ON,
Scottish & Southern, nPower, World of Warcraft, TicketWeb, Skipity, PayPal, Insure, LV Insurance, AXA, Vodafone, iTunes, EasyJet, LinkedIn,
East Coast Main Line, Brunel University, Neopets, Moorfields Pharmaceuticals, Tesco Direct, Thomas Cook, Lloyds Bank, BT.
1
The research was done by ICM. Total sample size was 2,043 adults. They did the fieldwork between the 4th and 6th April 2014, using an online
survey. They also say: ‘The figures have been weighted and are representative of all working UK adults (aged 18+).’
2
The good news
Some people were doing interesting
things. Overall, the best terms and
‘Things that aren’t covered’.
Could you do the same with your
Although the actual detail fails to
terms and conditions?
live up to this promising start.
conditions were short, structured so
Clear translations of legalese:
you could easily skim-read them, and
LV don’t even use the phrase ‘terms
written in clear, natural English –
and conditions’. They say ‘important
which kept the readability score high.
things you need to know when using
Upfront summaries: LinkedIn
LV.com’. Nice.
Brands: give your small
print some big love
You’ve got your customers’ attention
for less than five minutes. You can
make that count: write your Ts&Cs
don’t make you wade through
Short paragraphs and natural
well, and your customer could
everything – they summarise what
language: BT’s leading the way here.
understand everything they need to
each section is about in a nutshell.
Our stats show that reading parts of
know in that time.
For example, it’s much easier to read:
their Ts&Cs are as straightforward as
‘We are a social network and online
reading a Harry Potter book. Without
platform for professionals’ rather than
the Horcruxes, of course.
the whole of:
Inventive ways of explaining
‘The mission of LinkedIn is to
difficult ideas: Facebook’s terms
connect the world’s professionals to
explain ‘deleting IP content’ like
enable them to be more productive
this: ‘When you delete IP content,
and successful. To achieve our
it is deleted in a manner similar
mission, we make services available
to emptying the recycle bin on a
through our websites, mobile
computer.’
applications, and developer platforms,
to help you, your connections, and
millions of other professionals meet,
exchange ideas, learn, make deals,
find opportunities or employees, work,
and make decisions in a network
of trusted relationships and groups.’
And you could of course do
a chance to surprise and impress
your customers.
But write them badly, and you not
only risk annoying or alienating your
customers, you’re also being unfair:
if the Ts&Cs are too hard for them to
understand or too long to reasonably
stick with, you’re forcing your
customers to start their relationship
with you with a lie.
something more radical: The
American tech company NetApp
once famously threw away its 12page meticulously detailed internal
expenses policy and replaced the
whole thing with a single statement:
Helpful subheadings: Vodafone’s
‘We’re a frugal company, but don’t
terms contain subheadings like
show up dog-tired just to save a few
‘Which words mean what’, and
bucks. Use your common sense.’
Want a hand with your words? Give us
a call on +44 (0)20 7940 7540
thewriter.com
Write them really well, and it’s even
Write them well,
and it’s a chance to
surprise and impress
your customers. But
write them badly,
and you not only risk
annoying or alienating
your customers, you’re
also being unfair…