What&#39;s the nature of Expedia&#39;s Contract with a customer? This question considers the case where a customer books a flight through Expedia, the airline cancels, and yet Expedia does not return the money to the customer. It seems to me (and others voting on the answer) that basic contract law means that if you buy a service, and the party you contract with does not provide the service, then the money should be returned. I understand that some of the money may be a non-returnable fee recompensing Expedia for the effort in placing the booking, but what about the rest? Without wanting to get into the specific case, and without wanting legal advice, what is actually the nature of the contract with Expedia? Are they just acting as your agent, passing your money along to the airline in return for a fee? If that's the case can they actually keep your money that was returned to them by the airline and refuse to give it back to you?
This is an interesting and challenging question, with broad applications. The standard answer is &quot;read the contract&quot;, to which one should reply &quot;show me the contract&quot;. It has to be findable from a web page – a contract can't be a secret document that the accepting party cannot find. At the bottom of their main page, you can find a TOS. It states that This Website is provided solely to assist customers in gathering travel information, determining the availability of travel—related goods and services, making legitimate reservations or otherwise transacting business with travel suppliers, and for no other purposes. In other words, they disavow any implication that they are also selling you a product. The agreement is with &quot;the customer visiting the Website and/or booking a reservation through us on this Website, or through our customer service agents&quot;, which confirms that they are &quot;facilitating&quot; an arrangement (with a &quot;partner&quot; i.e. the airline). The agreement part comes where they say By accessing or using this Website, booking any reservations for travel products or services, or contacting our call center agents, you agree that the Terms of Use then in force shall apply In case of dispute, there is a section on &quot;working it out informally&quot;, which has the bottom line You and Expedia agree that any and all Claims will be resolved by binding arbitration, rather than in court, except that you and we may assert Claims on an individual basis in small claims court if they qualify. This includes any Claims you assert against us, our subsidiaries, travel suppliers or any companies offering products or services through us (which are beneficiaries of this arbitration agreement). The section &quot;SUPPLIER RULES AND RESTRICTIONS&quot; which starts Additional terms and conditions will apply to your reservation and purchase of travel—related goods and services that you select. Please read these additional terms and conditions carefully. In particular, if you have purchased an airfare, please ensure you read the full terms and conditions of carriage issued by the travel supplier, which can be found on the supplier’s website. You agree to abide by the terms and conditions of purchase imposed by any supplier with whom you elect to deal, including, but not limited to, payment of all amounts when due and compliance with the supplier's rules and restrictions regarding availability and use of fares, products, or services. Airfare is only guaranteed once the purchase has been completed and the tickets have been issued. Airlines and other travel suppliers may change their prices without notice. We reserve the right to cancel your booking if full payment is not received in a timely fashion. I went through the exercise, and it does offer a highly unintelligible stream of text that states the &quot;rules&quot;, though the text is hosted on Expedia and not the carrier's website (this refers not to the contract of carriage, but to the booking-specific contract details that state the flight-specific conditions. The contract of carriage is on the UA webpage). The next paragraph states In case of a no-show or cancellation, you may be entitled to a refund of airport taxes and fees included in the price of the ticket purchased. Where you are eligible for a refund, you can request such a refund from Expedia customer service, who will submit your request to the airline on your behalf. You will note the conditionality of this information. They do promise to submit your request to the airline – that's part of the contract. Your agreement with Expedia is murky, but it appears that you have not agreed to acquire a flight from Expedia in exchange for money, rather, you have agreed to allow Expedia to facilitate your contract with the carrier(s), where there is no clear statement of &quot;consideration&quot; in the agreement, but one may assume that what they get is whatever commission they have negotiated in their contract with the carrier. It is not clear to me that there is such a thing as &quot;Expedia credit&quot;. They refer to airline credit, which is certainly a thing. The first thing they say is &quot;If you’ve had to cancel or change your non-refundable flight, most airlines will offer you a credit instead of a refund&quot;. I can attest that issues do arise when an airline cancels a flight then issues a credit rather than a refund, however that was a foreign carrier who changed their policy after a year. The named airline has a (current) statement of refund policy. Your relation with the airline is ultimately reducible to their contract of carriage. Refunds are covered under Rule 27. In theory, they should therefore issue a refund, but also read Rule 24, where para D says In the event of a Force Majeure Event, UA without notice, may cancel, terminate, divert, postpone, or delay any flight, right of carriage or reservations (whether or not confirmed) and determine if any departure or landing should be made, without any liability on the part of UA. UA may re-accommodate Passengers on another available UA flight or on another carrier or combination of carriers, or via ground transportation, or may refund, in its sole discretion, any unused portions of the Ticket in the form of a travel certificate or travel credit. So it depends on the circumstances.
No If you breach the contract that may allow the rental company to terminate it (among other things), however, termination would need to be communicated to the customer. Only if they kept it after that, with the intention of permanently depriving the company of it, are they stealing it.
Based on your answers, it sounds like this transaction was most likely structured in one of two ways: (a) your colleague bought the computer with the intention that you would use it and then return it to him when you were done borrowing it for a task he hired you for; or (b) your colleague bought the computer with the intention that you would keep it as payment for the work he hired you for. In either case, it seems you would have to return the computer. In the first case, you received the computer only on the understanding that you would return it when you were done with the work. Because you are retaining it while your colleague owns it, your colleague could puruse a replevin action to force you to return the computer, or a conversaion action to force you to pay the value of replacing it. Scaffidi v. United Nissan, 425 F. Supp. 2d 1159, 1168 (D. Nev. 2005). In the second case, you would not be entitled to keep the computer because you failed to perform your contract. Because you are not going to complete the work you agreed to, you are not entitled to the keep the computer your colleague agreed to give you in payment.
I have already contacted a lawyer and paid all the money I had and they didn't help me resolve anything, the guy just talked to me for a little bit. He essentially just took my $600 and no action was made. He said the best thing to do would be to wait it out because the contracts were never fulfilled by them and they can't claim my inventions etc if I am an independent contractor. To me it just sounded like a bunch of BS and not a real solution to this. You paid $600 for expert advice which told you to do nothing. You think the advice is bullshit and intend to go full steam ahead against the advice given. I'd say it is very likely that the lawyer is a better expert than you, so you should follow his advice. You are in a hole, you were told to stop digging, and you intend to continue digging. Don't. There are times where doing nothing is the best advice. In this case, you intend to accuse someone of breach of contract. That has a good chance of landing you in court. A company cannot afford to ignore such a statement. You claim the contract is void and you want to cancel it - but you can't cancel a void contract. It's void. Listen to your lawyer.
If someone gave a gift than requested it back is it legal? The request itself is legal, but that does not mean that you have to comply with it. I never promised anything that tied to the tablet. So I'm not sure if it counts as a conditional gift. It does not. An unconditional gift (which initially you did not even want) fails to meet the elements of a cognizable doctrine such as contract, promissory estoppel, fraud, or unjust enrichment. he says he will report the tablet as stolen if I don't return it He might get in trouble if he does that, since he knows or should know that the tablet was never stolen. He gave it away despite your initial refusal(s). As such, he might incur false reporting of a crime.
If I understand your question correctly, you have some clients who have paid you for services that you have not yet provided and, indeed, they have not yet requested. Is this correct? The accounting term for this is a "prepayment". The correct accounting treatment is to increase an asset account (your bank account) and create a liability account (Prepayments or something similar). You need to talk to your accountant about how to treat these for consumption and income taxes. Legally, these people are now creditors of your business - just like all of your suppliers and employees. There is no legal requirement to escrow or otherwise treat this as trust money. Basically, if your business goes bust they will lose their money. This is something that you should have dealt with in your contract with your customers - if you are running an online business then you should get a lawyer to revise your terms of service to cover things like how they can ask for a refund (and how long you have to get it to them) and how long (or if) they forfeit the funds. As it stands the money effectively becomes yours after whatever time under a statute of limitation applies to transactions of this type and size (under whatever law applies to the contract) since after that time they cannot sue to get it back.
In any sane jurisdiction, the clause would hold. By and large, the legal fiction is that one has read and agreed to execute the entirety of the contracts they signed. If it was otherwise, no contract of substantial length would ever be enforceable upon individuals; yet such contracts are routinely offered and enforced (look at the terms&amp;conditions of any internet website that sells stuff). It is absolutely normal that a phone sale would gloss other minor details of the contract, and implicitly refer to the written text for the finer points. If the specific point had been raised in the phone call, and the salesperson erroneously told you X when in fact the contract read Y, you might have a case, but even then it is not necessarily a strong one (you signed the contract after having called; you might have changed your mind when reading the actual text, and you paying the insurance monthly bill is evidence that you agreed with the contract as-formed). There are some exceptions to that general principle: General conditions of validity of a contract. For instance, in france, a contract must have a &quot;definite and legitimate content&quot;. If we sign a contract for &quot;a few apples against a few euros&quot;, and then I give you five apples, you owe me zero euros because the contract was not specific enough to be enforceable. If the whole contract is unenforceable, the clause falls with it. General conditions of a validity of a clause. Specific clauses can be invalidated without bringing down the whole contract (for instance, &quot;in case X fails to perform their obligations under clause 70Z, Y is allowed to take a pound of flesh from X&quot;). Specific conditions on certain clauses. Consumer laws in some jurisdictions make certain clauses of certain contracts either invalid entirely, or only valid if they were read aloud to the prospective buyer, or only valid in certain forms. (For instance, in France, a sale of real estate between individuals must be notarized.) I would be extremely surprised if the rule in the OP’s example (residence condition to bring another driver on the insurance policy) would fail under any of those.
Let's say I buy a phone. Typically you can buy a phone with something that is advertised as "no contract" or for example "with a 24 month contract". In reality, "no contract" means "we have a contract where you hand over the cash, and the phone company hands over the phone, and there are various guarantees that are either implied or explicit, but there are no terms in the contract that force you to hand over money to the phone company beyond payment for the phone in the future if you don't want to". So there is a contract, but the contract is such that you as the customer have no obligations towards the seller once you have paid for the goods. "No contract" would happen for gifts, or as an example if you download open source software in the USA for free. There will be a difference between a "no contract" contract between business and consumer or between two businesses. Most countries have consumer protection laws so if a deal is advertised as "no contract" and the business demands further payments, they will likely lose. Between two businesses, each side is fully responsible to study the actual contract terms.