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Replying To:
Battle of the forms - a winner (none / 0) (#2)
by Anonymous User on Tue Nov 09, 2004 at 03:00:58 AM PDT

It can be very easy to sign away your rights at the sweep of a pen, but you can also do things to protect them - but you may have to be a bit sneeky sometimes. I wanted to rent a house and on being presented the contract insisted on reading through the small print, much to the annoyance of the agent who wanted to move onto the next customer. Srangly enough, up to this point I had requested three times for a pro-froma copy of the agreement for me to review prior to signing and never got one. Made me suspicious. I found that the contract had a dispute procedure, for which all costs had to be borne by me no matter who stared the dispute procedure nor who won the dispute. Also, although following the dispute procedure prior to legal action was was binding, the result was non-binding. The final insult was that if there was legal action, I agreed to pay all the legal bills for all parties, again no matter who started the legal action and no matter who won the case. I regarded this as a complete licence for the company to do anything, including breaking any agreement they wished with impunity and to bankrupt me in the process. Some perople have said that 'they wouldn't do that'. My response was,if not why wasit in the contract?. So I signed the contract when the agent was distracted and crossed out this clause - and the agent didn't notice. At the end of the rental the renting company witheld my deposit for entierly spurious reasons. (I found out that they were very well known in the area for doing this to every tennant). I started the dispute procedure and at the first hearing, they tried to come on heavy by pointing out but not-quite-theatening-me-with all the costs of the dispute - until I pointed out the crossed out section in the contract. After a bit of sputtering about the crossing out not being legal, I just had to point out the alteration was done in their agents presence and had been 'accepted' for the duration of the rental and I got a cheque for my deposit. Was I on 'good' legal grounds? Who knows, but it gave me enough leverage for them not to bother arguing further.


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