The cost of fine print? About $3K a year.
If you think America is shifting to a culture of transparency, unfortunately, you’re wrong: consumers are drowning in more fine print and byzantine disclosure language than ever before. Bank contracts and product manuals commonly bloat to hundreds of pages, in type as small as 1/6 of an inch.
Who reads this stuff? Almost nobody. And as this news clip from a CBS affiliate in Alabama reveals, that costs the average household about $3,000 a year.
Lawyers argue that excessive language is necessary to “protect consumers.” But until disclosures are presented in a form people actually read, they’re doing just the opposite: allowing organizations to bury unattractive terms in pages of jargon, while simultaneously shielding them from legal liability.
“Devil in the Details” by Shanisty Myers
