Companies with nasty sneakwrap terms would prefer of course that customers not read them. Ticketmaster -- which you may recall has one of the worst privacy policies around -- appears to have come up with a clever way of making sure they don't: make reading the Ticketmasters you-have-no-privacy privacy policy and other sneakwrap agreements a time trial for customers.
"I just had the wonderful experience of purchasing tickets through Ticketmaster," a reader wrote. "I won't get into my gripe about how they have a stranglehold on basically all the music/entertainment/sporting event ticket sales. I'm particularly annoyed by their order processing and privacy policies. Their online ordering system has time limits for each screen where you select tickets, shipping, and enter in your information ranging from one to three minutes. They say the point of these time limits is to ensure nobody holds up a particular ticket for too long, but they prevent you from fully reading and understanding the information presented to you."
But Ticketmaster's final billing page was the one that really set the reader off. "On the last screen where you enter your name, billing address, and credit card information, they give you three minutes to fill it out," the reader wrote. "And they put a note on the bottom saying that by clicking the submit button, you agree to their terms of use and ticket purchase policies ticket purchase policies. Ed, I don't know how anyone could even just read one of these documents in three minutes! It boggles my mind."
Just out of curiosity, I tried reading Ticketmaster's 4,200-word terms of use and 1800-word purchase policy documents to see how long it would take me. Just skimming over the words without much comprehension, it still took me almost ten minutes, and I've probably read more sneakwrap agreements than just about anybody except those who write them. If I'd actually been buying a ticket, I would have had to start over three or four times.
One thing I didn't miss in the terms of use -- and neither did the reader -- is that it also obliges to read that horrible Ticketmaster privacy policy. In its current rendition, the privacy policy over 3,800 words, and it's more confusing than ever. And, yes, it still has all that stuff about Ticketmaster sharing all your information with their event partners, and the event partners in turn being able to do whatever they want with it including selling it to others.
"It's an opt-out policy with no way to opt-out," marveled the reader. "Only by reading their privacy policy -- where they 'demonstrate our firm commitment to protecting information you submit' -- do you learn that you have to go to the My Account section of the site to change your preferences. On that page, they note that 'Regardless of your selections above, if you purchase a ticket, or if you complete a registration form in order to be able to purchase a ticket to an event or to receive a ticketAlert, then parties associated with that event or Alert may still be provided with your information and may still contact you.' What are we supposed to do? It's not like we can avoid Ticketmaster!"
Well, maybe you can avoid Ticketmaster, but what we can't avoid is the utter futility of trying to read vendors' sneakwrap terms when they don't really want you to. After all, Ticketmaster gives you three minutes to fill out a form and read almost 10,000 words of dense legalese, and that's supposed to mean you've entered a binding legal agreement. It's just one more example of how vendors believe they can write their own ticket when it comes to voiding the rights of customers.
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