Let’s be perfectly honest here, how many of us actually bothers to read a service’s entire terms and conditions before using it? We’re pretty sure that not many of us do, even though we probably should, and this is something that Manchester-based WiFi provider Purple wants to bring to attention.
The company based in the UK supplies WiFi hotspots to various public locations, such as Legoland, Outback Steakhouse, and Pizza Express. Recently they introduced a joke clause in the terms and conditions where if users agree to use their WiFi service, they are expected to complete 1,000 hours of community service, which includes cleaning the toilets at festivals, scraping chewing gum off the streets, and the best one, “manually relieving sewer blockages”.
Now clearly Purple does not expect anyone to follow through (and we’re not sure if it is even enforceable to begin with), but they did it “to illustrate the lack of consumer awareness of what they are signing up to when they access free wifi.” They also offer a free prize to any customer who actually bothered to read it and flag the “community service clause”, in which so far only one person has successfully done.
This isn’t the first time that companies have inserted joke clauses into their ToS and terms and conditions, so perhaps we should start paying closer attention to them.
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