Fine Print and Low Lights

It often happens that people have to give you information that they know will upset or enrage you or, perhaps, if you are a customer, cause you to take your business elsewhere (assuming you have a choice).

This is why we have fine print and low lights.

When was the last time one of your credit card issuers printed in huge letters on the face of your bill a message like: "WE ARE GOING TO RAISE YOUR ANNUAL PERCENTAGE RATE TO 24.99%, EFFECTIVE JULY 1ST!"? Never, of course. They'd rather you just mechanically opened the envelope, looked at the minimum payment due, and wrote the check, without thinking about how badly you're getting screwed. They are required by law to notify you of these changes, but they'd rather do it without attracting your attention...thus, the practice of stuffing your bill with assorted flyers and multi-page handouts printed in 0.007-pitch Times New Roman in which the unpleasant news is buried at paragraph 4.7a(2)(g) and written in a combination of pidgin Sanskrit and Old Church Slavonic. You can't say they didn't tell you.

Agnes takes a bit different view of this, as she works in a credit union and often has to absorb the outrage of people who suddenly realize that they have to pay some new or increased fee they hadn't expected. When we talked about this the other day, she pointed out that when people open new accounts, they're provided with detailed lists of fees and rates, and new fees and rates are announced in the flyers mailed to members with their monthly statements. "What else would you have us do?", she asked. My suggestion, to put the bad news in large type on the face of the bills or statements (as in my example above), went over like a transatlantic rowboat. I think we've agreed to disagree on this one.

Marriage documents are another example of pernicious fine print. I didn't realize that I was agreeing to chop all the onions and garlic, walk the dog in the rain, kill large insects, take out the garbage in howling gales, and perform other duties as assigned. It was all in the fine print. Of course, my fine print was in legal German as well, but I was warned.

Restaurants do the same thing, but they use a little different tactic - they turn down the lights so you can't quite see the prices on the menu. You probably thought the low lights were meant to enhance the romantic atmosphere, but you were wrong. They use other tactics as well: one is the use of a simple number for the price - "14" instead of "$13.99." Another is overwhelming you with words: "Thirteen Dollars and Ninety-Nine Cents" instead of "$13.99." A third is to appeal to your sense of the exotic: for instance, charging you $5.95 for a side order of green beans by calling them "haricots verts."

Fine print. You can't leave home without it. You can't hide at home and avoid it, either. That's why God made magnifying glasses.

And obscure, elderly professors can make a living teaching Sanskrit and Old Church Slavonic.

Have a good day. Nothing hidden in the fine print here.

More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo