Giffgaff Survey Finds Half of Brits Unlikely to Read T&C’s

A new Atomik Research survey, which was commissioned by mobile network operator giffgaff, has claimed that 46% of its 2,000 UK respondents struggle with their attention span, which has led to accidental sign-ups to masses of emails (25%) and unwanted contracts (18%).

Ideally, we should all be taking the time to fully read and understand the T&Cs for every new service we want to join before completing an order. But in reality, most consumers will just skip, or at best skim read, the massive ‘wall of text’ that typically resembles a modern Terms & Conditions document. Such documents can be incredibly complex, with the worst offenders being stacked full of unfamiliar terms and legal jargon.

As such it’s probably not too surprising that, according to giffgaff at least, 29% of British people are more likely to read a long WhatsApp message than they are to read the full T&C’s when making a purchase. Similarly, 46% admit to being frustrated by lengthy messages, including WhatsApps and T&C’s, with 21% of us ignoring them entirely, despite potentially getting into a sticky situation.

Summary of Key Survey Findings

➤ Whether it’s a text message or T&Cs, 55% blamed complicated jargon as their excuse for not reading all the information they were given,

➤ 39% are frustrated that they need to pay attention to the small print to avoid being ripped off.

➤ 16% have even had to pay a high exit fee to leave a contract because they didn’t read the small print properly.

➤ 89% don’t believe that companies do all they can to ensure readers fully understand T&Cs, of which 48% believe organisations make small print and T&Cs difficult to understand.

➤ 39% describe the fear of being ripped off by small print as a big bug bear. Yet despite this, 35% accept the conditions anyway, leading to unwanted sign ups and loss of cash.

The challenge is often in how to resolve these problem areas without sacrificing the legal importance of having T&Cs in the first place. LSE Professor, Elizabeth Stokoe, said: “It’s clear that a combination of jargon and text length is the most common reason why people stop paying attention to T&Cs – despite knowing that this might create problems down the line. Being bombarded by lengthy jargon-filled text also creates frustration and uncertainty, since 20% of people also said that they don’t know what they need to do or read when confronted with such text.”

The online survey was conducted by Atomik Research among 2,004 respondents from the UK. The research fieldwork took place on 11th – 14th August 2023. Atomik Research is an independent creative market research agency that employs MRS-certified researchers and abides to MRS code.