“Don’t worry about it, this is just our boilerplate. No, it’s not negotiable.”
“All that small type printed in light-gray on the back of our invoice? That’s just our standard terms, don’t worry about them. Just sign where indicated.”
We’ve all heard this from customers and vendors. Many of you likely don’t bother to read the “small print”, and if you do read it, you probably wonder whether it’s intentionally dense and inscrutable; the words may all be in English, but string them together and you have complete gobbledygook.
Unfortunately, this “boilerplate”, those “standard terms”, they really do matter, and they can have a significant impact on your company. They allocate risk between you and your customer/vendor, and they can limit your rights to sue and collect if the other party misbehaves. When they’re the other party’s terms, they are often very one-sided and, frankly, unfair. And, they often ARE negotiable, if you try hard enough (and if you’re reasonable in your demands).
In this blog, I will periodically be discussing common contract terms, what they mean, and how they can be negotiated or modified, in a recurring feature called “What did I just sign?”
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