Electronic Waiver Advantages

Thanks to the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (E-Sign Act), which was passed into law in 2000, signing an electronic waiver with an electronic signature is now considered as legally binding as a signature on paper. And, thanks to WaiverSign, gathering signatures on electronic waivers is not only incredibly easy, but also secured via SSL, OAuth 2.0, Amazon Web Services Cloud Storage and other top-end security protocols.

WaiverSign was built with the overall user experience in mind, but more importantly it was built with recommendations and input from professional lawyers who specialize in mitigation of liability for businesses based throughout the United States and Canada.

Leveraging WaiverSign to present your waiver or other important documents to your participants to sign, inherently comes with many advantages that a paper process simply can’t match. Three of these advantages are: Access, Integrity, and Transparency.

Access

In the case of high risk activities or adventure tours, many tour operators accept, or even require, pre-arrival bookings or reservations often days, weeks, or months in advance. The earlier you can get your document in front of the eyes of the participant, the better it is for you and your company. Many participants have argued that they were forced to sign a lengthy legal document, after arrival onsite, and immediately prior to participation. Because of this “pressure,” they were not given sufficient time to read and understand the document and the inherent risks of the activity in which they were about to participate. In the case of walk-up business, this type of scenario probably can’t be avoided, but having a tool like WaiverSign in place, will provide you with an opportunity to present your document to your guest at the earliest possible time.

Integrity

Leveraging WaiverSign also maintains the integrity of your document. Many rafting outfitters and adventure tour operators have discovered signed release of liability waivers where certain pieces of the document have been lined through or crossed out and then initialed by the signing party. While WaiverSign has functionality that allows a business to present an Accept/Decline section of content to the participant, at no point in the signing process does the participant have the ability to manipulate the wording in the document itself.

Transparency

In the days of paper waivers, once the document is signed, it usually becomes the property of the business that presented it to the participant in the first place. Especially in the case of walk-up business, rarely would the guest receive a copy of the document they just signed.

With WaiverSign, the business and the participant, receive a time-stamped and IP-address labeled copy of the document in question. One copy resides in the WaiverSign admin account, and a second copy is shared with the participant using the required email address they supplied during the signing process. Especially in the case of documents needing to be signed prior to arrival, this provides more opportunity for the participant to re-read your document and understand their risks prior to participation.

Summary

With all of the tools and advantages WaiverSign provides, we still cannot stress enough the importance of working with qualified legal counsel, who understand your business, and can draft the wording of your legal documents to best protect your interests. Once you have that in place, WaiverSign will help you present your document to your participants from multiple access points, will protect the integrity of the document itself, and will provide both you and your guests an easy solution to review and store the document as you see fit.

Helpful Links

Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act
Uniform Electronic Transactions Act
Adventure Travel Trade Association
National Outdoor Leadership School
America Outdoors Association