New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
Should TOS and AUP be in providers footer?
Unbelievable
Member
Should there always be a link to a providers TOS and AUP with last date modified in their footers to avoid misunderstandings? Also on special sales should they be required to list all special terms under the item purchased in WHMCS/Blesta - just like they list ram, diskspace bandwidth etc? Seems it would clean up tons of threads about that mean vendor, that wrong vendor etc etc. With the follow on- this is not a help desk, then the vendor responding with the pile of tickets and the "true" story, followed by lowend lawyers. Just a thought
Thanked by 1kkrajk
Comments
Tbh,
. Forget about tos and aup, some won’t even read what they are ordering. (Saying as the guy who has tons of checks on different products).
Most people don’t read
@seriesn - just curious, does it print out on their paid invoice? If it did that 90% of the complaint threads would end in 1 or 2 comments. ie tell them read invoice, you lose, game over, the simple reply LOL. Just my 2 cents
Here's a fun one, just for example, I list setup time on each order form (printed on invoice and order email), yet guess how many % of people opens ticket asking when service will be setup
.
I do these less for lol and more to ensure positive customer experience and to cut down on unnecessary tickets. But sadly doesn't work
People do not read a wall of text, period.
No point.
Even when their arse is on fire, they will not read.
Thus, the end is nigh.
Yes. Not necessarily in the footer but some place obvious.
I don't post offers on LEB without a TOS/AUP and a link to it.
Some people do read TOS/AUP - e.g., they want to host something that not all hosts take, so they scan the TOS/AUP to see if it's allowed. Beyond that bullet-pointed list, a lot of the rest is either boilerplate or should be obvious (what, I can't host my criminal cartel's child porn site on my VPS?!? no spamming?!? I'm shocked by these restrictions!)
For those people that are running WHMCS. There is a "I have read and agree to the Terms of Service" that you have to click the checkbox on. And you can click on where it says Terms of Service to see the TOS. But like @seriesn said. Nobody will read it.
thats why refund policy should be on invoice. So when they dispute it to credit card or paypal- you can say- see its clear as day- right on the unpaid invoice and the paid invoice
Just like you getting a Landing Card to fill in and acknowledge when flying into a foreign country - no one reads it in detail, or don’t read it at all.
The people who care about the tos/aup would look for it themselves. No matter how visible they are, people who don't care simply won't read. I don't read all the fine print but I usually try to take a quick look at the part which talks about resource limits or things that are not allowed. You would be surprised to find that some hosts have very bare bones aup or have resource limits on vps that are as restrictive as shared hosting.
Yes. Those are the first thing I check. If the aup and the advertized service really mismatch, that's a no go for me. If the privacy policy doesn't even come close to GDPR compliance (like not even disclosing third party payment processors/fraud detectors) I also write it off. One of my ex-providers deployed Cloudflare while having in the terms that "you can't give away your password to any third party".
Yes! Kudos for the very few providers who also include historical versions and reasons for change.
Yes. But I think those terms should be published before the sale goes live. Otherwise you are at a great disadvantage against the F5 army if you want to read anything at a limited offer.
I agree. On the other hand looking at those threads it seems many vendors think they can overwrite customer protections laws with "special terms".
YES! Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy should have a button, or link, in the footer of main website.
Yes, it is also true that people do not read them. But this does not mean that potential customers don't know how to search (Ctrl+F) for specific terms, such as: SLA, usage, CPU, Tor, porn, IP spoofing, proxy, game, IRC, and so on.
To all providers: please post links towards TOS and AUP in your website footer.
I try to read TOS before purchasing server, etc. If you will hide it then you can lose many customers.
I still get people asking to cancel their VPS because it doesn't work.
I don't sell VPS.
The problem with people not reading ToS would be solved if they contained Easter Eggs. There's a few companies who have given $10,000 rewards for whomever first reports it after reading ToS (it's a PR stunt). It's usually weeks or months after the reward is inserted, IIRC.
Maybe that's how double bandwidth promos should be ran. Put the redeeming instructions buried in the ToS.