Your mouse hovers, perhaps with a little excitement, over the small icon of the supermarket trolley and you click, anticipating that you’ve closed the deal.
Wait. Instead of the satisfying confirmation that your purchase is complete, you’re diverted to a page asking you to read fine print. And not just one page, there seems to be an endless scroll with dozens of terms and conditions. It comes as a sense of relief when you spy a checkbox. You tick: “I acknowledge that I have read and understand the terms and conditions,” and click accept, having not read the terms and conditions, yet somehow confident there was nothing important in that grey wave of legalese.
Credit: Matt Davidson
Most of the time, we never think of this frequent interaction again, but when things go wrong these unread words can come back to haunt us. The yawning gap between what business think they are selling and consumers are actually getting was brought home recently by Qantas’ response to allegations that it misled travellers selling tickets for more than 8000 flights that it had already cancelled.
Qantas says that the case, launched by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) in August, “ignores the realities of the aviation industry”. It says that airlines don’t sell a particular ticket on a particular flight, but rather a bundle of rights that promise to get customers on their way to their destination as close as possible to the flight time they book.
While a court will decide whether Qantas did mislead its customers, the defence certainly seems to be divorced from the understanding most customers think they get when they book a flight via the Qantas website or app.
Click and hope for the best.Credit: Wayne Taylor
But it’s not only Qantas that seems to have a different view of what it sells to what consumers understand they are getting. This seems to be widespread across Australian business, particularly online.
Nearly every time we sign a contract online, we’re at a disadvantage to the firm with which we’re dealing. Businesses set up the terms of the deal – often hidden in fine print – and we click “accept”. We don’t read it even when the terms and conditions specifically require us to indicate that we’ve read the terms on offer. Research confirms that only one or two of every 1000 people read contractual agreements when making purchases online.
And it’s not just terms and conditions that create an expectation gap between businesses and consumers. Business practices including marketing, product design, as well as customer service systems can all be designed to manipulate consumer understanding and choices.
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