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So what’s the significance?

It’s a personal touch and requires a little more thought when agreeing with it in my opinion, but is that something 37signals is going to ponder implementing?

Practically I don’t see it achieving anything more than a simple checkbox. It does on the other hand provide an additional level of annoyance to customers at a point at which making things as painless as possible is critical.

Change for the sake of change rather than for the sake of a better customer experience is just plain daft.

Oh No. Another Nick Campbell. Looks Like I’ll have to be Nick Vegas again :(

About the initials. I don’t think it’s a personal touch. It’s probably all about making the user more accountable.

Initials are a very US-American thing to me. I don’t think this would work well at all in a lot of cultures.

When working in customer service I heard the most absurd excuses for not being accountable to conditions. “The checkbox was checked by default”, “I didn’t check it, your ‘server’ must have had a ‘flaw’ registering that”. Initials are just a little closer to a signature.

@nickvegas Heh, you have all my emails and accounts!

I think that accountability is personal though. It’s like applying your signature to a check. Distinctly your own. Which I think touchscreens can lead back to instead of simply using a code, check, or initials.

This is one of the very few bits of legalese that I suspect was in direct response to legal troubles Priceline has had and I also suspect addresses these issues successfully.

For Priceline in particular, there is a real incentive for customers to back out of the transaction once they know all the information that was hidden pre-transaction. Not surprised if they had lots of people saying they didn’t understand what they were doing, and this provides a little proof that they did.

@Andrea : in France, it is generally mandatory to put one’s initials at the end of every page of a contract, then to sign only the last page.

Active.com and a few other race registration sites require they same thing for the organizer’s liability waver.

I fail to see how this changes anything, other than make the form more difficult to fill out. Is there any precedent to justify using this?

I did a couple quick tests on Priceline. From what I can see, they do not verify your initials match the first letter of your first/last name. So, wouldn’t this system of using initials cause them more problems than a simple checkbox? Situation:

Bob Smith is the passenger name. The initials “NO” are entered next to the terms/conditions agreement.

Bob books the tickets. A week later, he can’t travel and has to cancel. He contacts Priceline to cancel. They tell him the flights are non-refundable:

Bob: “I never agreed to those terms when the flights were booked.”

Priceline: “Sure you did, I have your initials….uh, the initials ‘NO’ right here in the system.”

Bob: “My initials are BS. See? I said ‘NO’, I do not agree to the terms, and you let the purchase through without my agreement to the terms.”

Priceline: “Uh…well….uh….let me get the supervisor…”

I see this system much easier to abuse than the checkbox, unless Priceline verifies the initials against either the passenger or billing name (should probably be the billing name, since that’s who’s credit card is being used).

I think the purpose is probably to slow users down and make the act of agreeing more deliberate. A checkbox can be checked in two thirds of a microsecond and barely register on the users consciousness. Typing the initials probably makes most users realize “I am agreeing to this”, and maybe makes a few more read the terms.