Posted on by Jon Colgan
What’s one of the top financial mistakes people in their 20s often
make?
Signing consumer service contracts:
- Without first reading them and;
- Assuming thereafter that the service provider is adhering to the terms first agreed to.
Almost 99% of contracts signed today are non-negotiated, standard-form contracts, including virtually all consumer service contracts. It’s easy to sign and forget–cell phone contracts, TV contracts, internet contract, gym contracts, etc.–but don’t.
Service providers assume that most consumers aren’t paying attention and therefore won’t notice any incremental changes such as a sudden price increase. These changes not only add up in dollars, but these sneaky terms changes actually bind consumers if the provider’s changes are not objected to. Don’t sign and forget.
It’s time-consuming to stay vigilant, I know, and that’s why I founded CellBreaker to solve that problem for cell phone contracts. About half of our customers are early twenty-somethings, and we save users about $1,000 on average by constantly monitoring cell phone contracts for changes. On the high side, we recently saved one NJ family about $2,000 in the first year during a live segment for ABC World News with Diane Sawyer.
Start young, and stay vigilant. With the completely automated “justice as a service” platform we built, staying vigilant with contracts is free and easy.