After reading Monica Goyal’s post, I started to think about the change in companies. Companies now make large agreements in order to protect themselves from being sued, and I believe as a way to confuse the reader. When I sign up for an online website and the agreement is extremely long, I just press “Accept Terms” without reading the actual document. “Accepting Terms” without actually reading a company’s agreement is bad, because we users don’t know what we have agreed to.

Earlier in the year, Zappos announced a large security breach that affected roughly 24 million customers. In response, users launched a lawsuit against the company. Zappos tried to send the lawsuit to arbitration because their “user agreement” stated they were not accountable for this issue. However, once the court read Zappos’ user agreement, they discovered a couple of clauses that seemed unfair, for instance, one allowed Zappos to change their terms and conditions at any time. As a result, the court forced the company to proceed with the lawsuit.

After reading Goyal’s blog, I realized companies are adding clauses that are unfair to users. Companies get away with these actions because a majority of the users don’t actually read the agreement. Therefore, I believe users should start reading company agreements, and that companies should only include clauses that would affect a user in any given situation.

Sources:

http://blogs.itbusiness.ca/2012/11/why-zappos-user-agreement-didnt-stand-up-in-court/#more-4842

(Monia Goyal’s blog post)

http://www.dragonflyeffect.com/blog/dragonfly-in-action/case-studies/zappos/