The clerk who read the contract out

Two car hire counters stand side by side at the airport in Muscat, and they hand over almost the same contract.

At the first, the clerk slides the pages across, points to four places to initial, and says what clerks say. The customer signs without reading, because the queue is behind him and the clerk is smiling. Ten days later he brings the car back with a scratch on the bumper and learns, at the same counter, how large the excess is.

At the second, the clerk turns the pages towards the customer and stops on three of them. This one is the excess, she says, and it is high; this is what it costs to reduce it. This one is fuel, and we charge more than the station if it comes back empty. This one is gravel tracks, which the insurance does not cover, and most people heading for the mountains do not know that.

It takes two minutes longer. Some customers find it tiresome.

I think the second clerk understands something about agreements that a lot of businesses forget. A contract is not a trap you hope the other person walks into. It is a record of what both of you have agreed, and it only works if both of you actually know what that is.

Signing is the cheapest moment to understand it. The customer has time, nothing has gone wrong yet, and nobody is angry. Every clause explained at the counter is an argument that never happens at the return desk.

The first counter saves two minutes and loses the customer on the day something goes wrong. The second spends those two minutes and earns a kind of trust no advertisement can buy.