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by mpweiher 4227 days ago
Dunno about the UK, but in Germany "surprising" clauses in everyday contracts such as this with consumers are generally illegal. End of story. If this got as far as a court, case would be over in seconds. Read opening statements, have laugh, verdict, good day.

Also don't know which way the EU swings on this, my guess would be towards the German position.
2 comments
ajuc 4227 days ago
Yup. The alternative is - expect all the clients to read small print on everyday contracts and interpret it correctly. That would be dumb and would slow economy considerably. Imagine hotel making the contract 200 pages long.

Staying for a night at hotel shouldn't require you to hire a lawyer.

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Shivetya 4227 days ago
What if you declare it up front, in big print. Really. I wonder how many people would still stay. Just put it right above the dotted line on the front page.

By signing this receipt and accepting the key to your room you agree you not place a negative review of this facility on any public accessible site.

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toyg 4227 days ago
The fact that most people would only look at the bottom line (i.e. price) doesn't mean that this wouldn't be a gross infringement of freedom of speech, and unfair trading to boot. Trading involves the possibility of goods not being up to par, and hence the customer complaining to a third party. As long as complaints are not libellous, there is no reason why they could be forcefully restricted.
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mpweiher 4227 days ago
Still not a chance. Big ink, flashing letters, PA announcements. Same as invisible ink. Courts have a very low opinion of people getting "tricky".

In Germany at least, for example, ALL Click-Through licenses are invalid (last I checked).

A US company I worked for had various (illegal in Germany) data tracking stuff activated. When I pointed this out, they just pointed to the license agreement. Morons. (It was a hardware/software combination, and you only got to the software a long time after you had bought the hardware).

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rmc 4227 days ago
> Also don't know which way the EU swings on this, my guess would be towards the German position.

The EU law from 1993 "Unfair Contract Terms Directive" is probably where it comes from. So all over EU.

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