Banish The Small Print

I don't know about you but I am thoroughly fed up with the dreaded small print that can be found on letters, online, even on adverts that you see on the TV.

Personally I think that the small print should be made redundant.

I'm sure I am not the only one that has been caught out for not reading through policies as closely as I should and of course companies take advantage of this, it's like their "get out of jail" card.

Recently I had to make a claim on my phone insurance (this was a hard enough process), when they finally agreed to send me a new phone they sent the wrong colour, I got a black one instead of the more expensive gold one that I had originally purchased. It was then pointed out to me that in some stupid clause in teeny tiny print that an alternative may be sent if the product you require is unavailable. I had to really search to find this statement. However after many phone calls and angry tweets I was finally sent the correct phone after they admitted that it hadn't been made clear to me at the begininning that this may be the case.

Our car insurance is also one that needs to banish the small print. We purchased what we thought was accident and breakdown cover when we took out our insurance but turns out when my husband actually got into an accident we were only covered for breakdown leaving him stranded. Again it took a lot of searching to find this stated in the terms and conditions. Again they soon admitted wrong doing reimbursing us for my husband having to pay to get home after his accident.

Now if these clauses in the minute small print are that acceptable why are companies then back tracking and saying that actually they're wrong?

And why is it that the supposedly most important information is written in the tiniest of writing and right at the end of a long list of dos and don'ts?

There are probably some of you reading this thinking well you really should have paid more attention to what you were signing up to in the first place but I'm sure you all agree that you'd like to see all these clauses and disclaimers made a lot clearer to all, I think even if you manage to reach the end of a policy document (which can read like a novel sometimes) you probably won't understand half of what you've read.

In my opinion everything should be written in the same size and in a way that easy for even the stupidest of people to understand. As much as possible these documents should be made black and white, the dreaded grey area that leaves room for argument should be removed.

Surely companies have been around long enough to be able to come up with simple and straight forward policies rather than the comlicated and long winded ones that they currently provide us with.

It's high time that they banish the small print!!

xxxx