I don't know if this is just plain laughable, or if I have to laugh to keep from shaking my head so hard I'm afraid I'll sprain my neck.
It's saturday morning and I am catching up on my reading. I see an ad in a trade magazine, I have a quick, non-urgent question for the company who placed the ad, so I figure I will send them a quick e-mail. I go to their website, click on their "contact us online" link. I am immediately greeted by a five point, 521 word statement of terms and conditions that I had to accept before I am allowed the privilege of sending them a message.
Yep, you read that right. It took 521 words to explain the terms and conditions under which they are willing to hear from a potential customer or business partner.
Doing a quick scan through their website, this disclaimer page appears to rank second in terms of the amount of content on any given page. The only page with more content is the "About Us" page. Hmmm.
Of course, each condition was more ridiculous than the rest. Here is my favorite one:
"[company] may at any time revise these Terms and Conditions by updating this posting. You are bound by any such revisions and should therefore periodically visit this page to review the then current Terms and Conditions to which you are bound."
So now I have a new part time job. Awesome.
I often talk about marketing and online media in terms of having a conversation. This kind of thing certainly isn't a conversation but it speaks volumes about the company and what they stand for.
I don't know what to say, DON'T DO THIS. Hopefully, no one who reads this blog creates these types of barriers to customer dialog. If you made this mistake years ago and want to correct it, give me a call and we'll work together to fix it.
P.S. – Want to place a bet on when I will hear back from this company? I'm guessing never. Leave your guess as a comment, and if they ever contact me, I'll give the closest guess a prize.
