Teleblend’s terrible terms

In our continuing search for the worst Terms of Service (ToS) on the Internet, we’ve seen some pretty nasty legalese. Now a reader points out VOIP provider Teleblend’s “Customer Opt-In Service Agreement,” which certainly has more than its share of customer-unfriendly provisions. But what’s really striking is how Teleblend takes the already laughable “contract formation” rules of the typical sneakwrap license to absurd new heights.

“I originally signed up with SunRocket, which filed Chapter 7 last July with no advance notice,” the reader wrote. “As part of my one-year agreement with SunRocket, they had provided a free VOIP gateway. After the bankruptcy, Teleblend purchased some of the SunRocket hardware and customer information. Having those assets made them an easy port in a tough time, so I went ahead and transferred. No new contract was required by Teleblend, so I was only at risk of current service, which was in the toilet anyway, so it made sense.”

At no point since Teleblend took over does the reader recall being informed that there was a new ToS replacing the agreement with SunRocket. In fact, Teleblend’s pace of change was very slow. “Here we are nearly a year later and Teleblend still does not have all of the SunRocket names removed from their URLs and voicemail, and their customer portal and website are nowhere near complete,” the reader wrote. “Now my VOIP gateway has gone bad. After five days of no phone service, I finally wised up and started looking for another VOIP provider.”

The reader discovered the Teleblend ToS while trying to find out if the company would swap the malfunctioning gateway. “I know you’ve seen some real EULA whoppers and this one may not rank in the top five, but it is indeed worth a dishonorable mention. The first surprise is that by simply using their service they claim your acceptance of the terms, even when, as in my case, they never told you the terms exist or where to find them:”

“BY ESTABLISHING, ACTIVATING, USING, OR PAYING FOR THE SERVICE, YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT YOU HAVE READ AND UNDERSTOOD THESE TERMS, YOU AGREE TO THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS IN THIS AGREEMENT …”

By the way, that term actually appears in BOLD CAPITAL LETTERS in Teleblend’s very visually-busy ToS — in fact, it’s one of the more painful agreements just to look at that I’ve seen, as it also makes liberal use of bright red capital letters, lowercase bold, and regular capital letters to make different sections “conspicuous.” By my count, almost 1,300 of the 6,800-plus words in the body of ToS are highlighted in some way — a pretty long bit of sneakwrap all by itself. But it isn’t all by itself, as some of the terms that the reader was most concerned with are very inconspicuous unless you look hard, like this one for instance:

“Initial use of the Service authorizes TeleBlend to charge the card number on file with TeleBlend, updated by any changed information related to card expiration, replacement, or substitution. This authorization remains valid until 90 days after TeleBlend receives your notice to terminate TeleBlend’s authority to charge your card, whereupon TeleBlend will charge you for any outstanding charges and terminate the Service.”

That’s not good for the reader, since he’s in the process of dropping them. “I understand some additional charges may need to be cleared after service termination, but 90 days after termination?” he wrote. “Of course, you waive any rights to credits for loss of service, no matter where the fault may lie, so I can forgot about getting anything back on the outages. And you also waive all rights to use your credit card companies dispute resolution or suffer a $100 service fee:”

“Billing Disputes. In order to dispute any charges on your TeleBlend bill, you must notify the TeleBlend Billing Department at 1-877-488-5519 within sixty (60) days of the date of the charge. All charges after this 60 day period are considered final and undisputable. All disputes within the period must be submitted directly to the TeleBlend Billing Department since doing a chargeback through your credit card company will result in the suspension of your service. If your service is suspended due to a chargeback being issued through the credit card company, reactivation of the service will be done so at our discretion and a fee of one hundred dollars ($100.00) will be applied to the account. The processing times within our billing department for handling the disputes are between 7 and 14 business days.”

And while it’s no surprise that the Teleblend ToS would include a mandatory arbitration clause, the reader points out that it goes to ridiculous lengths to try to tie the arbitrator’s hands:

“Any dispute or claim between you and TeleBlend arising out of or relating in any way to the Service or the Equipment provided in connection with this Agreement shall be resolved by arbitration before a single arbitrator administered by the American Arbitration Association in accordance with its Commercial Arbitration Rules. The arbitrator’s decision shall be final and binding. In conducting the arbitration and making any award, the arbitrator shall be bound by and strictly enforce the terms of this Agreement and may not limit, expand, or otherwise modify its terms. Without limiting the foregoing, the parties agree that no arbitrator has the authority to award relief in excess of what this Agreement provides.”

Note by the way that the American Arbitration Association actually has a different set of rules — and fees, more importantly — for consumer arbitration as oppposed to commercial arbitration between two businesses. So the Teleblend ToS is really demanding that the arbitrator violate the association’s guidelines, not to mention consumer protection laws in California and many other states.

There are numerous other gems in the Teleblend ToS, like this one for example:

“TeleBlend reserves the right to audit your use of the Service to enforce the provisions of this Agreement. TeleBlend reserves the right to track and monitor your Service and usage subject to the requirements of the United States Patriot Act and other laws and appropriate law enforcement processes.”

The part I really like is at the end where they have the standard sneakwrap provision saying that any changes to their terms become binding and effective when they post them on their website without any other notice to you. But then they push it a little further than I remember ever seeing before:

“The Agreement as posted supersedes all previously agreed to electronic and written terms of service, including, without limitation, any terms included with the packaging of the Equipment and any terms provided to Retail Customers.”

In other words, even if you got what looked like a real contract when you signed up for the service, those terms are voided by whatever they choose to post on a webpage you (as was the case with the reader) may not even know exists. And this they call an “opt-in” customer agreement?

“A peach, indeed,” concludes the reader about the Teleblend ToS. “What I’m really waiting for now is to see what Teleblend does after the port to my new VOIP provider is complete. The interesting legal angle would be if Teleblend tries to claim the bad gateway as part of the SunRocket assets it purchased. Since I am dropping them as a provider I am willing to risk the $100 charge by using my credit cards dispute process if they try to tack on any charges.”

But there’s always another ToS just around corner that’s even worse. If you run into it, write me at Foster@gripe2ed.com or post your comments below.