The contract should be signed before buying the software, not when a consumer has already paid for it or wasted his time and Internet traffic to download it.
Imagine if you bought something and then learned that you have to pay again to be able to use the item.
A contract should be beneficial for both parties. But EULA only limits consumer's rights without giving everything in exchange.
I agree that the fact that you only see them after the sale is a problem, though one that would be "solved" to some degree if every vendor could be reliably relied on to honor the terms that say "if you don't agree, return it to the vendor for a refund".
There are bunches of problems around EULAs, but the general concept of an agreement you must adhere to in order to legally use the product doesn't seem especially legally shady to me. Or at least not in the ways referred to by the commenter I was replying to.
Imagine if you bought something and then learned that you have to pay again to be able to use the item.
A contract should be beneficial for both parties. But EULA only limits consumer's rights without giving everything in exchange.