March 2010

Fine Print Friday: Travelocity Airline Ticket Purchases

March 26, 2010

Travelocity is one of the largest online travel reservation sites, with around 13 million site visits per month in 2009. Purchases through third party sites like Travelocity, however, can be confusing for consumers, particularly when it comes to changes in travel schedules by airlines. Since the purchases are made through Travelocity, customers are subject to the terms of both Travelocity and the airline from which they purchased their tickets.

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Dakota Fanning’s Tattoo Contract: Is It Valid?

March 25, 2010

Dakota Fanning was a guest on George Lopez’s show, Lopez Tonight, on Monday, March 22, 2010. During the interview she told Lopez that when she was 11, she and her sister had signed contracts with her mom stating, “I will not ever get a tattoo….” To date, it seems she has not gotten one, although she is still only 17 and would likely have trouble getting one on her own at a licensed shop.

Although the tattoo she got during a commercial break on Lopez’s show was just drawn on and will wash off, there’s still a question as to whether it would have broken her contract if she had gotten a real tattoo.

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Fine Print Friday: A2 Hosting’s 99.9% Uptime Guarantee

March 19, 2010

As so much of our communication today is dependent on the internet, website uptime (the time when a website is accessible by the public) is vital to businesses and organizations. Anyone who has developed or run a website knows just how important it is to have a reliable host–both for support and to ensure reliable website access. Consequently, many web hosts advertise their uptime percentage and some guarantee a certain amount of uptime.

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Contract Basics: Consideration

March 15, 2010

Contract Basics is a series of posts meant to give my readers a more fundamental understanding of the rest of the items and concepts posted on Pro and Contracts, and provide some context for understanding contractual situations in their own lives. Contract Basics III: Consideration Consideration is the last of the three items fundamental to [...]

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Fine Print Friday: Bank of America Power Rewards Visa Signature Card

March 12, 2010

As one of the United States’ largest banking institutions, Bank of America (BoA) has made itself a household name in most areas of the country. It has its share of detractors as well, and in light of recent changes to the credit industry and BoA’s decision to eliminate overdrafts on debit card transactions (foregoing millions in revenue), one of their most popular credit cards seemed like a good candidate for Fine Print Friday.

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Contract Basics: Acceptance

March 8, 2010

Acceptance is the second of the three most basic necessities for forming a contract, the first being the Offer, and the third being Consideration. The Acceptance is generally considered to be much simpler to execute than the Offer, but like Offers there can be pitfalls to Acceptance that will void the Offer or fail to complete the agreement.

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Fine Print Friday: Facebook’s Service and Privacy Agreements

March 5, 2010

Facebook has become one of the world’s largest social media sites, with around 400 million members chatting away, sharing pictures, videos, status updates, personal messages, invitations, gaming, and all other manner of activity. As Facebook has increased its size and influence, and altered its interface, it has been under increasing scrutiny regarding users’ rights and responsibilities, most notably with regard to their privacy.

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Contract Basics: Is That An Offer Or A Suggestion?

March 2, 2010

On its face, Contract Law in the United States is rather simple. There are only a few requirements to form a basic, valid Contract: an Offer, an Acceptance, and Consideration. Everything other than these three requirements constitutes an attempt to make better legal sense of a given set of circumstances. Offers, Acceptance, and Consideration also each have their own parts that determine whether they are valid (i.e., whether they constitute real instances of those things according to the law), but contracts at their most basic require only these three items.

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