Failing to return hired goods: criminal offence or civil matter? Meet Bob. Bob hired a TfL/Santander bicycle for £1.65/30minutes and lost it. Bob has presumably committed a breach of contract, but has he committed a criminal offence? Now meet Alice. Alice hired a car for £30/day from enterprise. She also loses it and fails to return it. Has she committed any criminal offence or are these situations purely civil wrongs? Does the answer change if it is a DVD from Blockbuster rather than a car or bicycle?
I cannot see any criminal offence with Bob losing a bike. It is, as far as I can see, purely contractual. According to TfL Santander Cycles Lost, stolen or faulty page: If your cycle is lost or stolen, call the Contact Centre on 0343 222 6666 (call charges may apply). We're open every day of the year. And: Charges for missing/damaged cycles You may be charged if the bike is not returned or is damaged by you or an additional user. Not returned: up to a maximum charge of £300 Damage: up to a maximum charge of £300 Similarly, purely losing a hire car is not a criminal offence. It would be a matter for the insurance provider to deal with. If Bob was complicit in theft, then that would require a different (and off-topic) answer.
I'm not a lawyer, but I am an NHS employee, and can more concretely answer your questions. Has any crime been committed, and if so, is there any point in pursuing this with the police? If so, how do I go about it? Yes, in-fact, several crimes have been committed. Firstly, NHS employees are prohibited from viewing patient's personal information that they are not specifically treating. In opening your letter from the NHS, the nurse in question violated this practice. It's a breach of both privacy and trust. This is taught at the NHS and the nurse would be aware of this. Secondly, by cancelling your appointment, the nurse has committed workplace fraud. They have impersonated a patient, and in doing so, cost the NHS money and time it won't get back by cancelling your appointment. Again, this is also taught within the NHS, and the nurse would be aware of this too. Thirdly, by cancelling your appointment, the nurse may have put a life in danger in doing so, which is effectively gross negligence at a minimum. Although this can be reported to the police, it'll be more effective to report it to the appropriate NHS bodies. Even if a crime has not been committed, I would think that at the very least, opening someone's mail and then impersonating them and cancelling the surgery would at least be viewed as unprofessional, especially for someone employed in the NHS. Is there a procedure for making a complaint against an NHS worker? There are several different approaches, given the various breaches of trust. As BlueDogRanch mentioned, you can file a compliant to NHS England, which includes via email. Be sure to get appropriate information like the nurse's name, address, and if possible any details (like appointment reference numbers) to aid the investigation. Secondly, because of the cost incurred via the malicious cancellation of an appointment, costing time and money (and running the risk of opening the NHS to litigation), you can also report the fraudulent aspects to the NHS Counter Fraud Authority.
Fraud may be a crime, or a tort (civil wrong): only criminal fraud can be a &quot;felony&quot;. The Washington criminal laws about fraud are here, and they are all fairly specific, such as selling or destroying encumbered property (which is a misdemeanor anyhow), or conducting a mock auction. Most frauds are misdemeanors, though forgeries are in the felony category. It also includes identity thefts, again the emphasis being on false documents. Based on your description, this is not a crime, it is a civil wrong, meaning that she will have to sue the guy to get her money back. The Attorney General's office will not get involved unless there is a widespread state interest (for example, very many Washington residents being victimized), and then the involvement would be suing on behalf of the victims. That said, if the swindle was carried out by phone, then that is potentially a violation of a federal felony law, 18 USC 1343. It would not matter if the parties are in the same state, because phone service counts as &quot;interstate commerce&quot;. So the details of phone involvement matter. Saying that you &quot;have to&quot; charge for processing a refund is not per se fraudulent and texting someone that &quot;I'll have to charge an extra $2,000&quot; doesn't make this wire fraud. But there is some potential for a federal wire fraud angle.
It is likely that the law applying will be both that of the USA and your country. If you went to court this would be one of the things you argued over. For example, Australian Consumer Law applies to any goods or services sold to a customer in Australia irrespective of where the vendor is located. Your jurisdiction may have similar laws. At first blush you must comply with the term of the contract preventing reverse engineering. They would be within their rights to terminate the licence if you don't. However, they probably have an obligation under your equivalent to the ACL to supply a product that: is merchantable is fit for purpose does what it says it will do If it doesn't then you have a right to terminate and get your money back, sue for damages and your country's government may prosecute.
Yes, but that doesn't make the theft not theft At the time of the crime, Joe committed theft. The state can prosecute Joe for that theft. Alice's subsequent gift does not change this although it would prevent her from suing for recovery. As a practical matter, if Alice was willing to lie and say that the gift preceded the theft or she had given permission for the item to be taken, this would almost surely create reasonable doubt in any prosecution. However, on a pure &quot;these are the facts&quot; basis, the theft is a theft.
The person getting the item by fraud didn't get any ownership. Therefore when you bought it, you didn't get ownership either. It's still the company's property, and they can do with it what they like (within reason, they wouldn't be allowed to make it blow up in your face). If you sent back the item, good on you, because the item is now with its rightful owner. If you don't like it, you can sue the person who sold the item to you.
You've already found an answer to the question about theft in the linked answer, that since they do not take the goods, nor even intend to take them away permanently there can be no consideration for theft here. There may be a case of criminal damage though, reading up on CPS website brings up some interesting points, notably: Damage is not defined by the Act and what constitutes damage is a matter of fact and degree. The courts have construed the term liberally and included damage that is not permanent such as smearing mud on the walls of a police cell. The damage need not be visible or tangible if it affects the value or performance of the property. It could be argued that by rearranging merchandise in a shop, with clear intent to disrupt its operation you are affecting the performance of the store, and that just may fall under criminal damage. Especially when done regularly, or in an organized way; something that demonstrably affects the business. Though in practice I doubt that anyone, besides the people &quot;hiding&quot; the papers, will care. Shelves in most newspaper stores are inspected and restocked multiple times a day, and as a part of normal customers routine stuff gets moved around and later corrected by staff.
This smells strongly of "bait and switch" fraud: offer a product at an attractive price, then "discover" that the product is not really available at that price. By that time the customer has sunk costs and is therefore willing to accept an alternative product with a lower quality or higher price than was originally promised. Looking at the homepage for ".club" it seems that they do indeed offer different prices for different names. I see "examples.club" listed at $101 while "model.club" is listed at $19,000. From your post it sounds like your hosting company have cancelled your purchase and will not actually charge you the higher fee. This is, as you say, a very dodgy practice. You might want to move to another company which is more up-front about unknown costs for such domains. If you have already paid the £7.99 then you are entitled to that money back. You do not have to accept a different name: that would be a classic bait-and-switch scam. They are NOT entitled to charge you a higher price unless you agree to it. If they won't return your money or try to charge you more then you should drop them like a hot brick and report them for fraud. Edit in response to question edit The situation is not clear-cut, and will probably depend on the exact wording in the company's terms and conditions to determine exactly when the contract was formed. An article about a similar case in The Telegraph had this to say: The legally binding contract is complete when a retailer accepts an order. However, acceptance does not necessarily happen at the point of order. Even the confirmation email may not be an acceptance. Some retailers reserve the right to cancel an order up to the point of delivery. It is therefore important to carefully check the retailer’s terms and conditions (which must be available on their website) and emails – if a retailer simply acknowledges an order, there may be no contract at that point. Lots of companies have T&amp;Cs saying that there isn't a contract until they actually deliver the item, so if they don't deliver then they are not in breach of contract. The company may also be able to argue that its offered price was so grossly disproportionate that it was an obvious mistake and therefore they should not be held to it. UK contract law is based on the concept of a "meeting of minds" where two people have the same view of the contract and agree to it, but this is rather problematic when one of the minds was represented by a buggy computer. You might be able to counter this by showing that they are still doing it, and hence this is an ongoing business practice rather than an honest mistake. Ultimately your only options, assuming they decline to honour the purchase, are to either accept the refund or take them to court requesting an order of specific performance.