Neon terms and conditions - are they illegal or in breach of contracts act?

Forums › Sky, Neon, Lightbox › Neon terms and conditions - are they illegal or in breach of contracts act?

nunz

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#183829 31-Oct-2015 10:58

I went to sign up for neon - free promotion from my ISP.

Three things I noticed:

1 - Terms and conditions - parts of them that need to be seen are in a neon green colour that is almost invisible on a screen, against their white background. Screen shot below. normally I would highlight the offending text by - well highlighting it with my mouse / drag across it. Neon have prevented this from happening. you cannot copy, paste or select text from them. i may be wrong but I am pretty sure a contract has to be legible to be valid.

2 - Screen shot two below shows you have to agree to the terms and conditions to get the service but to do so you also have to agree to your data going to third party providers - you cannot agree to Ts&Cs without agreeing to being on a third party advertisers list. At best it is implicit rather than explicit consent to advertising. It is definitely morally dodgy and a cruddy way to do business. you can only use our services if you let us send your info to others whom we don't disclose and by doing so contract to let them do whatever they want to with your info (it's in the contract if you dont believe me)

3 - Sign out / opt out. communications from Neon require a DOUBLE opt out of two databases - illegal under the spam act. If you remove yourself from their SERVICES database, you are still going to be in their ADVERTISING Database that provides details to third party advertisers. You have to explicitly sign out of BOTH databases - ie two communications and a double sign out. - I haven't found any sign out options on the website anywhere - again a breach of the spam act - you must be able to opt out, in the same manner as you opt in.

Neon - Illegable Ts & Cs

Neon - Single sign in with no advert opt out.

Another poorly executed online business process with dodgy advertising and privacy practices. I bet they paid a fortune to some designer for the illegible Ts & Cs.

Lias

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#1417858 31-Oct-2015 19:51

You almost sound surprised at Sky being evil and doing whatever the heck they feel like?

I'm a geek, a gamer, a dad, a Quic user, and an IT Professional. I have a full rack home lab, size 15 feet, an epic beard and Asperger's. I'm a bit of a Cypherpunk, who believes information wants to be free and the Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. If you use my Quic signup you can also use the code R570394EKGIZ8 for free setup.

nunz

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#1418146 1-Nov-2015 13:29

Lias: You almost sound surprised at Sky being evil and doing whatever the heck they feel like?

Not really - just having gone to the bother of reading the ts&cs thought would share the knowledge.

What really upsets me is how often businesses flout the laws designed to protect people and get away with it. Ray white spamming me at present with an address I believe could only have been harvested - and previous experience tells me spam.govt.nz wont do squat about it if i report it - ditto the above

freitasm

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#1418150 1-Nov-2015 13:59

Hanlon's Razor:

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

It could be that the person doing the website has no design experience or sense of aestethics at all and put any crappy colour combinations there just to tell the boss "NEON colours on the page!"

Behodar

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#1418153 1-Nov-2015 14:17

nunz: and previous experience tells me spam.govt.nz wont do squat about it if i report it

You've sure got that one right!

freitasm: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

That wouldn't surprise me at all though...

mattwnz

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#1418199 1-Nov-2015 17:15

I don't know anything about this case, and haven' looked at their terms. However we do now have the unfair contracts act. I do recall when it came in, that (I think it was the commerce commission) used ISPs as an example, and said many contracts they had seen had unfair terms in them. So I suspect many contracts out there do potentially have what could be considered unfair terms in them. If you do have any issues, I suggest talking to the regulators with your concerns.

nunz

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#1419288 2-Nov-2015 21:48

Ran into another one today. Quickbooks - reckon pos.

client has 2 shops - 2 single tills at one shop - which still need 2 x licenses and 2 tills with two users at other shop.

Reckon Pos - license is valid until 2024. Upgrade purchased 28 Sept 2014.

Tried to upgrade to 2015 - failed so had to stay at 2014. 2015 doesnt talk properly to Quickbooks (which is part of reckon pos) and do lookups properly.

Lic cost = $516 ish per till (not per install - per till) so they had to pay around $2100 or more

Problems over the last month - pos receipts wont upgrade into qucikbooks at end of night . Requested help and got told to go away unless you pay a subscription for support. Support is only expired by a week or so.

Subscription for support costs --- wait for it --- $516 per till. You cant buy support for the one till having issues, you have to buy support for all tills.

Therefore Cost of product = cost of yearly support - yet license for product without support is until 2024.

Issue found by me - they had reached 14500 items in their inventory. Quicken has a hard coded limit.
The fix to this? remove items - but the catch is you cant if they are associated with a transaction. Quickbooks associated thousands of items with one transaction as part of a summary of accounts in 2009 - no value transaction - a book entry only. You cant delete that transaction or alter that transaction. I tried sending all unused items to be same item in old invoices. (did any one notice how many accountants and tax people had a heart attack at that last sentence :) It's all right - I do know what i am doing and ensure historical versions are available separate to this file.

Cant delete old items - even if we try killing old transactions.

There is an answer - Pay Quickbooks / Reckon $860 PER TILL for support - and a complimentary upgrade to Enterprise 2015 - but wait - that's the same crud that failed earlier in the year and had to be reverted.

Talking to quickbooks - they had never heard of the Consumer Guarentees Act - support said she was in Auckland but amended that to australia later in the conversation as i said was I was amazed any kiwi in retail didn't know about CGA.

So my client had an upgrade failure while under support - not fixed. And now has to pay 4-5 x $860 for support. even though it is only one till down.

A cheap by comparison ($499) purchase of a third party ODBC to quickbooks module has made the issue fixable.

As a side note, there was an ammendment to the CGA in 2002? to cover software but it is still a contentious issue. i wonder how MS would fare with updates gone wrong.

nunz

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#1419291 2-Nov-2015 21:52

Behodar:
nunz: and previous experience tells me spam.govt.nz wont do squat about it if i report it

You've sure got that one right!

freitasm: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

That wouldn't surprise me at all though...

Yeah - that explains the neon - but not the lack of tick box and official notice you have to un-subscribe explicitly - twice. One for each database.

Reminds me - second day working for a Govt Dept. In Wellington with 500 other people. Big announcement from head chief or second head chief of IT dept that they have just finished a complete make over of the website themes, colours, look etc.

A rebrand so to speak. I made $10 betting the expensive knobs errr well paid consultants - who did the work put red and green together on the same page etc. Kiss goodbye to legibility for the colour blind.

Sharesies

Trade NZ and US shares and funds with Sharesies (affiliate link).

freitasm

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#1419296 2-Nov-2015 21:53

The CGA doesn't apply to businesses anyway.

nunz

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#1419440 3-Nov-2015 07:58

freitasm: The CGA doesn't apply to businesses anyway.

True - pity that. a service is a service nad a product is a product at the end of the day.