A businesswoman was left with a whopping £15,000 bill from her landlord after she misread the small print in her lease agreement, causing her business to go under. Faye Finaro, 40, was on the hunt for her first office space for her recruitment firm back in 2016 when she stumbled upon a promising location in Mansfield , Nottinghamshire. She confessed to feeling “pressured” into signing the lengthy 20-page contract on the spot, and said she was offered a discount as an incentive. Alongside her then-business partner, Faye hastily signed the lease for the commercial property without giving it a thorough read and got the keys that very day. It wasn’t until days later that they discovered the building lacked internet access, and they couldn’t even get into the server room to set it up. They resorted to using dongles for their staff, but operating without Wi-Fi proved ‘impossible’. Faye recalled: “We tried to tell them that we needed to go away and think about it before agreeing. But they started adding extras to help us make a flash decision and, in the end, we signed on the spot. “The same week we realised there was no internet, or access to the server to install it; that wasn’t mentioned in the agreement – they just omitted it.” When they attempted to terminate their lease four months in, to relocate their business, they were gobsmacked to learn they’d unknowingly committed to an 18-month break clause due to not properly scrutinising the terms and conditions in the tenancy agreement. Having moved in January 2016, they submitted their notice by April and had vacated the property by July. However, they began receiving letters demanding payment for outstanding rent. It was then that they were informed about the remaining 11 months on their break clause – a hefty sum of £13,200 – plus an additional £1,800 in interest. When they declined to pay, the landlord took the matter to small claims court where they lost their case. In January 2017, they found themselves in Mansfield Magistrates’ and County Court where they were instructed to settle the debt as they had signed the contract. Faye’s personal credit rating took a severe hit for several years, forcing her to shut down the business. She said: “I had to pay £15,000 on an instalment plan as we were personal guarantors on the property. “It was a huge setback and impacted how our business started; because of the default on my credit file, it led to the downfall of the business. We couldn’t access funding because the bank lenders saw me as too high risk.” In 2023, she kick-started her new venture, SOSBeauty, on a tight budget, relying on loans from friends. Now, Faye has joined forces with Adobe to share her tale, showcasing how their Adobe Acrobat AI Assistant can help spot the fine print in contracts. She’s managed to turn her new business into a force to be reckoned with and has since bounced back with a stellar credit rating, but the memory of that dreadful time still haunts her. Michi Alexander, at Adobe, said: “Faye’s story is more common than you’d think – 65 per cent of business leaders admit to signing contracts they don’t fully grasp. “We’re using AI to make contracts clearer, easier to compare and understand, with verified answers and built-in data security.” Faye added: “I’d advise someone else – don’t be scared to ask questions, and to ask for help. Don’t put too much trust in landlords that have their own interests at heart – get other tenants’ opinions too.” “The Adobe software would have been really useful when I was on the spot there,” she said. “I often check legal things using Chat GPT but you still need to use the right prompts to get the right information, so if you don’t know what to ask, it’s hard. “So, if I’d had something like that in which was specifically tailored to contracts, we would have been able to check.”