Month: February 2024

What’s the Deal? – On Contracts and Agreements

For a few weeks, we had a rental car on loan while waiting for our lease car to be repaired. The rental car was organised by the dealer, not, as I expected, by the lease company.

Several people reacted to my story about the lease company’s reluctance to keep us mobile after our car malfunctioned. A common assumption was that a lease contract is a DAAS (Driving as a Service) agreement. The car shouldn’t matter, what should matter is that we would stay mobile.

To be honest, that was also my assumption when I signed the lease contract. Or, to be more precise, when I signed the lease agreement, which was a shortened version of the full contract. The full contract was available on the lease company’s website. I remember looking through it at the time but not taking the time to read the whole thing, as it was many pages long and written in the kind of small-print legalise that makes your eyes water and your head hurt.

As it turns out, my understanding of the agreement I made with the lease company doesn’t quite match their understanding of what we agreed on. The basic contract is little more than a financing deal, with some additional services thrown in around maintenance, insurance and a financially attractive way to switch to a new car after a few years. Whereas the lease company’s website and informal communications are full of promises around ‘driving without the hassle’, ‘carefree driving’, ‘removing the burden of ownership’, etc. the actual contract has been carefully constructed to outline quite a few conditions, exceptions and caveats that undermine those promises. Had I taken the time and trouble to study the full contract before signing the agreement, I might have negotiated a different agreement, or go to a different lease company.

What we are left with is a mismatch between my understanding of the deal and that of the lease company. Whose fault is that? Mine or theirs?

Legally speaking the fault is mine, of course. Though not included in the paperwork the lease company sent me, the full contract with all its clauses and attachments was available online. I should have studied that before signing the agreement.

Ethically speaking the answer may not be that straightforward. The lease company didn’t exactly advertise the fact there was a long and complicated contract behind the simple agreement form I signed, for instance. It was only hinted at in a footnote, printed in super-fine print, at the bottom of the (mostly empty) page. Obscured by their logo and some irrelevant company information. Almost as if they tried to keep me from reading it. And the contract itself required close-reading and a higher-education level understanding of English to fully make sense of what it stipulated. Some very smart lawyers must have heaps of fun finding creative ways of denying essential services while seemingly making them available.

I believe that a customer-focused company, one that really cares about the well-being and satisfaction of their customers should feel responsible for making sure their customers understand the deal they are signing up for, especially when that deal is complex and prone to assumptions and misunderstandings. In such cases moral considerations should inform their duty of care, not legal arguments fuel their tendency to not care a damn.

The Unkindness of Strange Systems

I had planned to write a long-ish follow-up to a previous post about kind strangers, adding some examples of people going the extra mile to ensure my wife and I came home safely after our ordeal with our car’s sudden death.

Unfortunately, the days after the event were filled with the opposite experience: unkind systems practically designed to make our lives as difficult as possible.

I found myself caught between 5 or 6 different parties, all supposed to help us resolve the unfortunate situation we are currently in: at home in a rural area, far from public transport, without a car for a period of time that could last days or even weeks. The solution is seemingly simple enough: if we could get a replacement car for the duration of the repairs, there would be no real issue. But 6 parties, with at least a dozen systems to work through between them quickly turned this into a Kafka-esk labyrinth with nothing but dead-ends.

The lease company pointed out the car is still under warranty, so it’s the supplier’s responsibility to provide us with alternative transportation. The supplier referred us to the dealer who is carrying out the repairs. The dealer tried to help us but discovered his system doesn’t allow him to book a car for us, since I am not registered as the owner of the car – the lease company is. The lease company then tells me they can activate our insurance, and make a claim through them. But the insurer says their system cannot take action until an official damage claim has been put in. I would be happy to do so, but was told the repairing dealer was the only one who could do that – after having carried out the repairs. Only then could a replacement car be requested, except, of course, that wouldn’t be necessary any more, since by then the car would have been fixed and ready to be returned to us.

By the end of the day I have had conversations with the lease company, the supplier, the dealer, the tow truck company, the insurer, and a rental car company … every time getting stuck on similar systemic issues. It is evening here now, and so far, nothing definite has been decided. With so many unkind systems to throw obstacles on our path, it could be days before we have a solution.

I am sure it will sort itself out eventually. But what is striking is the difference between the kind strangers willing to bend the rules to assist us and get us safely home, and the unkind systems messing things up. I can only assume their unkindness is not deliberate. And I have no complaints about the operators I talked to, all trying to their very best to find a solution. But each system was designed to solve a small part of a much larger puzzle, with no real understanding of the total complexity. Built around assumptions, and rules based on those assumptions, that cover an even smaller part of the puzzle – the part in which everything goes according to plan. Which it seldom does.