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If you have ever wondered where the afternoon has gone after you sat down to quickly glance over the fine print before buying something online, we now know the answer. Secure Data Recovery analyzed the terms and conditions of 100 large companies in many fields in terms of length and ease of reading. The results couldn't be more different, but a trend is clear: The fine print is getting longer and harder to read.
We'll focus on travel companies here, but the full results are available. Here's what we learned.
Travel Companies With the Longest Fine Print
When it comes to the eleven travel companies surveyed by Secure Data Recovery, the results span a massive range in terms of length. On one end, you have Airbnb with a gigantic 23,585 words; on the other, you have Delta Air Lines with a paltry 1,731 words.
| Company | Fine Print Word Count | Reading Time at 200 Words per Minute |
|---|---|---|
| Airbnb | 23,585 | 1 hour and 57 minutes |
| Lyft | 20,381 | 1 hour and 41 minutes |
| VRBO | 15,643 | 1 hour and 18 minutes |
| Booking.com | 14,544 | 1 hour and 12 minutes |
| Trip Advisor | 10,506 | 52 minutes |
| Spirit Airlines | 7,856 | 39 minutes |
| Yelp | 7,669 | 38 minutes |
| Uber | 5,763 | 28 minutes |
| Southwest Airlines | 5,661 | 28 minutes |
| United Airlines | 2,558 | 12 minutes |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,731 | 8 minutes |
Considering the disparity, you must wonder whether Airbnb is stuffing its fine print with unnecessary information or whether Delta has omitted massive chunks of information that might be useful.
Travel Companies With the Hardest & Easiest Fine Print
The fine print is not a matter of length only. How easy it is to read and understand these terms and conditions comes into play. You could sit down with 2,000 words of super complex legalese that take you six hours to read or 10,000 words of plain English that you can cover over your lunch break.
To judge how easy or complicated the fine print was to read, Secure Data Recovery used the Flesch reading scale. Of the travel companies surveyed, nine had fine print that was “difficult,” one had fine print that was “very difficult” to read, and one had “fairly easy” to read fine print.
| Company | Difficulty Level | Flesch Score (Higher Is Better) |
|---|---|---|
| Tripadvisor | Very Difficult | 25 |
| Southwest Airlines | Difficult | 32 |
| VRBO | Difficult | 37 |
| Lyft | Difficult | 38 |
| United Airlines | Difficult | 39 |
| Yelp | Difficult | 41 |
| Uber | Difficult | 44 |
| Airbnb | Difficult | 48 |
| Spirit Airlines | Difficult | 49 |
| Delta Air Lines | Difficult | 50 |
| Booking.com | Fairly Easy | 62 |
Honorable Mention: AT&T
While we mainly focused on travel, AT&T is worthy of an honorable mention, due to its outstanding contribution to fine print length. The company stood head and shoulders above everyone else with fine print containing a whopping 56,615 words. Reading at 200 words per minute would take you an impressive 4 hours and 43 minutes (That is where the afternoon went!) to finish reading the terms and conditions.
To put this in perspective, the second-longest fine print section was a measly 32.066 words from Venmo, and it would only take a minuscule 2 hours and 40 minutes to read.
Honorable Mention: Booking.com
Booking.com deserves an honorable mention for the ease of reading its fine print. The company stood out amongst the 100 companies in all sectors: It was the only company with “Fairly Easy” to read fine print. That is one serious achievement, considering that over 85 companies have “difficult” reading scales for their fine print. Seven companies truly excelled by producing find print that's “very difficult” to read.
Our Take
It is no wonder most people don’t read the fine print, considering that, on average, it takes 52 minutes to read travel company fine print. That said, you have to wonder why companies have such long, complex fine print. Do they deem it necessary, or are they stacking the deck against their customers? Do they hope by having long, difficult-to-read fine print, people will give up and not read them? While that may be cynical, it does feel like it has a hint of truth. Either way, the shorter, and more concise the fine print, the more straightforward the company is to deal with. So, hats off to Booking.com and Delta.
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