SportsLizard Entrepreneur Blog

Thursday, August 03, 2006

Terms of service for brick and mortar stores?

One thing I love about running an online business is that you can get people to agree to your privacy policy and terms of service when they sign up (that is, assuming you state that fact). How cool is that? You know that no one reads those things and you can pretty much eliminate all liability that you have for anything and everything people could try to hold against you.

Want to sue me for accidentally losing your data? Can't, you agreed not to in the terms of service. Mad because I closed your account and didn't give you a reason? Tough, you agreed to let me do that when you signed up. Now, just because it says so in the terms of service doesn't mean that doing so is a good business move, but it's nice to know that if the proverbial shit hits the fan you can point to your terms of service and cover yourself.

That got me to thinking - wouldn't it be awesome if a brick and mortar store had terms of service? Maybe you would hear a message playing over the loudspeaker when you walk in to Best Buy, or have a poster on the door or at the register:

By walking into this store, you are agreeing to the following terms of service.

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Best Buy, its officers, employees, parent companies, subsidiaries, contractors, vendors or affiliates, from any claim or demand, including reasonable attorneys' fees, made by any third party due to or arising out of your visit to Best Buy, the violation of this User Agreement by you, or the infringement by you or any other person you walked in with, of any intellectual property or other right of any person or entity.

We may kick you out of the store, suspend you temporarily or permanently should you violate any portion of this User Agreement. Best Buy reserves the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason at any time. The failure of Best Buy to enforce any provision of this document does not constitute a waiver of such provision.


I wonder what people would think of that. I'm pretty sure that there would be an uproar. So why don't consumers care about all of the terms they agree to when they register online? We've become so used to ignoring those things that businesses stuff anything and everything possible into them to limit their liability. Great for businesses, bad for consumers.

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