We recently closed escrow on the mainland house, and I was brutally reminded of the horror of online signing platforms. Just a few things:
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You have to agree to a legal contract before you’re allowed to use the signing platform. “I need you to sign this contract, but in order to do that you have to agree to this other contract.” Often it’s a multi-page, legalese, fine-print laden document that has you agreeing to abrogate rights. I recently got a half-page document that the sender wanted me to sign using a signing platform, but first I had to agree to a twelve page contract of adhesion in order to use the signing program.
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“Explain in detail why you need X. Be sure to include a full description of any mitigating factors. _______________________.” I even had to use one platform that specifically said if you overflowed their ludicrously tiny spaces, the extra text would be included on addendum pages. That turned out to be a lie: the platform simply truncated everything I wrote. Obviously, nobody ever checked to see that the responses to which they attested were accurately included in the document.
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They force you in to false dichotomies with no provision for explanation.
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They provide no way to make annotations and corrections. The only option is to go back to the maker of the document, and say “we have to throw away all the work we’ve done on this so far because on line 33 of page 19 you typed “is” instead of “as.”
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There is no reasonable way to compare drafts of documents. Yes, I’ve already read those 22 pages, but now you’ve revised and repaginated them and I can’t check to make sure you haven’t made changes or mistakes.
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They skip from signature block to signature block. “Click here to sign the previous 31 pages that I just skipped over for you.” If you want to be sure you’ve read them, you have to tediously scroll back and find the previous signature block.
Just in case you missed the point that you’re not supposed to ready anything, just trust us and sign.
—2p