A service contract often reaches you through a brochure, a comparison sheet, a web page, a phone script, or a summary read aloud at a sales desk. Each of these can describe the product in plain words. None of them is necessarily the agreement you sign. Before you commit, find out which document controls, and check whether each promise you heard appears in it.
Name the controlling paper
Ask for the complete contract form you would be signing, along with its form title and any edition or revision label printed on it. Ask whether any outside page, schedule, or attachment is included or referred to. Then look for an entire-agreement clause, usually near the end, which says the signed document is the whole deal and replaces earlier statements. That clause tells you whether an earlier spoken assurance still counts. Read it yourself, and ask the seller to explain it in plain words. If the seller cannot point to it, ask why.
Match each promise to a paragraph
Take the sales material and list every statement that sounds like coverage, timing, or service: what is included, when it starts, who performs a repair, how a claim is made, and how cancellation works. Next to each one, write the heading or paragraph in the signed form where the same point appears. A promise with no matching paragraph is a question for the seller, not a fact about your contract. Where the form says something narrower than the promise, the form is the answer.
Ask these before you pay
Ask the seller to show you where each of the following appears in writing: the start point of coverage, the list of exclusions, the process for filing a claim, the cancellation method and any refund calculation, and whether the contract may transfer to a new owner of the unit. Ask whether a statement made on the phone or at the desk is in the form. Ask which document you should keep, and whether you can read the full form before any payment or signature is due. Ask who you contact if the form and the sales material disagree, and get that name and method in writing.
Read a gap as the contract
If the form is narrower than the brochure, the form is what you are buying. A brochure does not widen the paper, and a spoken 'that's included' does not change a written limit unless the form says so. If the seller offers to correct the form, ask for the corrected version and compare it line by line with the first one before you sign. Do not sign a form you have not read in full, and do not rely on a promise that appears nowhere on the page.
What this guide does not do
This is a general explainer. It does not read any company's contract, and it does not say what any contract covers, costs, excludes, or requires. For the published rules in a given state, start with that state's page on this site, which names the regulator and the statute and says whether a roster was read. Where a state page says a roster was not read, check with the regulator directly. For a large or unclear commitment, a lawyer can read the paper with you. This site does not offer legal advice.