Yup, even for smaller business stuff. For a non-profit I'm on the board of, the staff wanted a more useful printer/copy machine than just a store bought thing, it's a small office, so I said sure find something and let us know.

So I get a contract and am told it's been vetted and I should sign it. What I found was outrageous.

- If we cancelled for any reason, including if they just didn't do any of there terms in the contract, we owed the full price of the remaining contract immediately.

- The way they structured it was also as a rental, so we were paying full price for purchase of the equipment embedded into the term of the contract, but it was the vendors equipment, so if we cancelled we still paid them full price for the equipment, and they got to keep it.

- If there were any legal disputes, no matter which party was at fault, my side would pay for all the lawyers.

I said nope, can't do it. And my staff were pissed at me for like a year because everyone just signs those things.

So make sure you fully read the fine print before signing an agreement for something.

The article makes it sound like that wouldn't have helped.

It states that the terms of the contract were "unilaterally" changed, without anyone being told -- Something that the tech industry has normalized.

Reading the fine print of the signed contract wouldn't have helped, since the contract changed since then.

These days you're lucky if you even get an e-mail saying "Our terms of service have changed, and if you don't like it, tough noogies." People who are not lawyers on HN will say it's illegal, yet it still happens constantly, and doesn't seem to have been struck down in any court, or it wouldn't keep happening.

And factor the cost in time, effort and risk of mistaken analysis into the cost of what the contract offers. Many times, it just isn’t worth it.

I'm curious about about how the "unilateral amendment" works. If you didn't like the fine print in it, do you have to give your six month termination notice then and there?

I read the agreement for ID.me and it’s atrocious. It requires that I “voluntarily” waive civil rights. I don’t want to use the service.

There is no other way to log into IRS.gov.

You can’t watch YouTube without a Google account.

You can’t be in the parent group chat without agreeing to the Meta TOS for WhatsApp.

The list goes on.