A free bottle of wine written into a company’s privacy policy has finally been claimed – three months after it was offered, the founder of Tax Policy Associates announced on X.

The clause stating “This website uses cookies so it remembers your name if you leave a comment. You can reject them if you like. We will send a good bottle of wine to the first person to read this” was written into the policy in February as a test to see if anyone would read it.

while this is a light-hearted story, it’s a brilliant demonstration that many people do not take the time to read and understand contracts and policies before agreeing to them. And this poses a risk to both businesses and employees.

When it comes to contracts, the devil really is in the details. While most of us are probably guilty of clicking ‘agree’ when it comes to cookie policies or privacy policies on various websites, not reading contracts thoroughly could mean you’re signing away your rights.

Important details such as data usage, notice periods, financial penalties or benefits are all written into contracts. And once they are signed you can be held to the terms contained within the contract, whether you have read and agreed to them or not. Failure to understand what you have signed is not always a valid legal defence.

In an ideal world, employees would read everything that they are given by their employer, word for word. But unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world and the reality is that when important documents aren’t read properly, this can cause issues further down the line.

Not everyone is going to want to give a bottle of wine as a reward, but it’s in the employer’s interests to look at whether there are any steps that they can take to make key documents more accessible and readable to the whole workforce.”