What is exactly Terms and Conditions?
When I mention about Terms and Conditions, most of people would think about a very long agreement showed everywhere. Actually it plays very important roles in our life in many areas like job contract or warranty of goods. Terms and Conditions(also called T&C or Term of service) are rules and clauses which users must agree abide in order to use a service. Unless in the violation of consumers protections law, these terms are usually legally binding to two parties(organization and users). In other words, the time you agree the terms and clause, you must obey whatever they mentioned in the agreement.
What makes us agree without reading Terms and Conditions?
First of all, the age-group that have frequently contact with these agreements becoming younger nowadays, most of they are not as cautious and patient as the elderly do, when there is a agreement or contract, usually they just click on "agree" instead of spending time on reading that long and tedious terms and conditions. Secondly, people have assumption to think it is unnecessary to read just because that we seldom use or get involved in it, until one day some incident happen then we may regret that we never read it properly.
What is the consequence of not reading Terms of Service?
Since online shopping become a trend among the youth and busy working people, there are always terms and conditions for these products or service. However, a recently research shows that nearly six in ten adults said they would rather read an instruction manual or credit card bill than go through online terms. All the data indicates that people have not realised the importance of terms and conditions, as a result, they might find themselves landed with extra fees or charges, in the worst case, they are involved in a lawsuit that totally unknown.
Here is a case that shows "Site's terms still enforceable even if users never read them". The user Victoria Major agreed those terms while it is clickwrap (just click "agree" and never read the agreement), under this circumstance she wanted to cease the contract due to poor quality of service, however the company was not willing to do, they was utilizing those terms to sued Major and win the case.
How to avoid these "incidents" happen?
As long as there are terms of service, then we may face those incidents happen while we ignore the importance of those terms. The best way to avoid the bad consequence happen is to make sure you read every agreement that we need to sign, and understand those clauses.
References
Term and conditions:not reading small print can mean a big problem: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/may/11/terms-conditions-small-print-big-problems
Term of service agreements :
http://www.quora.com/Terms-of-Service-Agreements/If-it-is-broadly-accepted-that-terms-of-service-agreements-are-never-read-or-negotiated-and-instead-everybody-simply-presses-Agree-within-seconds-would-a-court-nonetheless-enforce-terms-of-service-agreements
