In USA, is getting credit card cash back this way legal? A credit card company offers 5% cashback in rotating categories every quarter. For example, from April to June, you get 5 dollars back for every 100 dollars you spend in a particular category, say home improvement stores. On the other hand, I have also noticed that for returned products in this category, you only lose 1% of the cashback. Image a person buys a product that worths $1000 from a store (and therefore earns $50 cashback) and immediately returns the unopened product (and therefore loses $10 cashback). Then he can basically get $40 for free. Of course, the credit company sets a limit on the cash back every quarter and thus no one can get unlimited money this way. My question is, is the practice described in the paragraph legal, or is it considered fraud?
Of course, the credit company sets a limit on the cash back every quarter and thus no one can get unlimited money this way. That's why it's &quot;legal&quot;. But that's not the correct term to use for what's going on. Yes, it's legal under general banking and finance regulations for banks to make cashback offers like that, even if it appears they lose money. A bank isn't going to run a cashback program that is illegal; they'd lose their banking license. What's the sense of that? They're not going to run a cashback program that looses them too much money, either. A better way to think of the cashback system and the way to game the system of 4% by returning purchases it is to realize that it allowed under the Terms of Service of the credit card and issuing bank. They get people to sign up for cards and use them by enticing them with money. And the bank has set a limit to the total cashback each quarter; the bank is smart enough to make terms that have no loopholes, yet still make them money. And, if you read the Terms, I'm sure there is a clause that says the bank can change the terms at any time, and you agree to those terms by default or by simply using the card. The bank can decide at any time to stop the program for certain customers if they abuse it, i.e. try to max out the cashback each quarter. So the idea of this being illegal or fraud isn't the case here; the idea is that it is legal as the bank sets their cashback rules under federal and state regulations, and can change them, when needed.
18 USC Ch. 17 contains the laws against doing things to US currency and coins, and sale of currency is not included. So it is legal to set currency for an amount above or below face value, the former being more common. There might be some illegal aspect to the particular offer (money laundering, fraud – implying that they are real money, counterfeiting) but no law regulates the &quot;sale&quot; of US currency.
Is It Legally Binding? While their customer service sucks, your oral authorization of the charge is legally binding (I take payments that way almost every day in my own business, it isn't an unusual business practice in small professional businesses). You authorize oral authorization of payments over the phone in the credit card agreement that your credit card company sends you every year that you don't read and throw away. The provider has to collect more information for a credit card payment over the phone than they do for an in person swipe in a credit card machine (e.g. your credit card billing address) and they are fully responsible for wrongful charges if they deal with an imposter. By regularly checking your credit card statements, you can confirm that no incorrect charges are present. Tax Issues If you want to take a tax deduction for non-reimbursed medical expenses, you simply need to tote up the amounts your are entitled to from your own records, and put it in the appropriate box on your tax forms. You don't have to attach documentation to your return. If the IRS disputes your payment, you can offer up your credit card statements and your photograph of the receipts, and if necessary, medical records to show that you received the services, to show that the payment really happened and are deductible. Your credit card company's records, reflected in your monthly credit card statements, are considered very reliable for tax purposes. You have the burden of proving that the expense was incurred and is of a type that qualifies for a deduction by a preponderance of the evidence in the event that there is a dispute that is litigated, which means that you must show that it is more likely than not that you incurred a deductible expense of that kind in that amount in that tax year. Privacy Issues While there are financial information privacy issues associated with this transaction, HIPAA, which covers medical records, normally wouldn't apply to a credit card payment that indicates the person paid, the person paying, the account, the amount and the date, but not a description of the medical services provided or to whom they were provided, which is what is normally on a credit card receipt. The financial privacy issues are also partially addressed by the provider's merchant agreement with the credit card company which contains terms requiring them to maintain certain kinds of security with respect to your financial information (which is not to say that the provider actually follows all of the requirements of their merchant agreement scrupulously, which is why data breaches happen all the time in businesses both large and small).
"Fraud" requires an intent to deceive. In cases like this I would fall back on the saying, "Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence." Practically speaking: the email you received from them is an amendment to their Terms of Service. I.e., your contract with the company starts with their standard Terms of Service, and is modified by any agreement you reach that explicitly supersedes the ToS. Based on your description it is your credit card company that is in violation of its duty to adjudicate chargebacks. If you refuse the charge, and present the email agreement and evidence of A's "failure," then the card company has no grounds to impose the charge on you (unless the merchant in its response to the chargeback can convincingly argue that the email agreement is invalid).
Yup, it's illegal. You want something, they have something you want. They let you have the thing provided that you do certain things, otherwise they won't give it to you. So providing a credit card is material to the contract. You know that the credit card number is false, you are representing that it is true, the card is a material fact, you intend to get them to allow you in using this false representation, they don't know it is false and they rightfully rely on your truthfulness. They have been harmed by your false representation (maybe: it would cost you a lot in attorney fees to try to challenge on this point). This is fraud.
united-states Meet the word &quot;clawback&quot;. The general rule is that anything you do simply for asset protection can be undone by the government or courts. See the excellent book by Adkisson and Riser titled Asset Protection. First, the creditor is going to ask about all your assets including transfers. You have to answer truthfully, or else you open a whole other can of worms. The creditor and court will look at the character of these transactions. Suppose you sell a Ferrari worth $200,000 appraised value, to your brother for $155,000. However, it was an open eBay auction. Plaintiffs review it, hoping to find it was a &quot;vest pocket&quot; sale rigged to be unappealing to anyone but family. Wrong: it was a competent and earnest listing, which did attract 12 stranger bidders, and 3 bidders took up your offer to let them inspect the car. And according to Ferrari brokers that price was realistic given the soft market. Your brother simply outbid them, for nostalgia reasons. You did get the money and did use it to settle with creditors. That sale will be considered legitimate, because there's extensive provenance held in reliable third party hands (eBay). You sell the Ferrari for $100 to your brother. The court will presume that you intend to buy the car back for $100 after your legal troubles have cleared. This sale will be declared invalid, the Ferrari clawed back, and the creditor will be able to target that asset. The same thing can happen if you are insolvent, expect to enter bankruptcy, and pay a creditor &quot;out of turn&quot;. E.G. you settle your debt with the country club (so you can keep attending) before you pay your tax bill. The creditors, IRS or court can &quot;claw back&quot; that payment. That happened to my family's business once. Meet the word &quot;Penalties&quot;. OK, so what does a dumb crook do? They lie about their assets. They testify &quot;I crashed the Ferrari on the property, it was a basket case. I parted it out and chopped up the rest, threw it in the weekly trash week by week&quot;. And they can produce no documentation of any part sales. Meanwhile, plaintiff had already pulled DMV records and found it's currently registered... to the brother, with a DMV sale price of $100. They sent over a detective, who has pictures of it sitting in the brother's garage. And plaintiff gleefully maneuvered the dumb crook into a lie under oath. And now they face judicial punishment - including harsh fines, and jail for contempt of court or refusal to disclose. This bypasses the Fourth Amendment, so there is no trial for proof of guilt. But it's a government agency, not a private party All the moreso, then. Government has the right to bypass some of the rules for private parties - such as being able to do asset search, subpoena, or attach assets without filing a lawsuit. The IRS is probably the most experienced at pursuing asset hiders. They have &quot;their own&quot; Tax Court which does exclusively tax cases.
You had bought product A. That constitutes you offering the seller a contract for you to get product A for your money. They keep the money and send product B - and now are in breach of the contract, as that is materially different from the contract both agreed to. Legal recourse is, depending on the customer protection laws, a refund of the payments or getting the correct product A. If you have a right for the Product A depends on exactly how it was advertized and the exact ToS.
Suing them and winning may not be that difficult, and you can generally sue a business even if it ceases to operate as a going concern. Collecting the judgment you win, however, is likely to be very difficult. Still if you are going to sue, the sooner the better, because outside of bankruptcy, the general rule is that the person who is first in time to actually seize the available assets of a company with more debts than assets is first in right to those assets. Also a squeaky wheel is often the one that gets the grease. "Shaming" companies on social media often works for going concerns, but is rarely effective when a company is actually going out of business soon. There are special remedies available against recipients of improperly diverted funds when funds are deliberately sucked out of the organization without receiving anything in exchange for its money (this is called a "fraudulent transfer"), but those cases are expensive to bring and hard to prove. Often in the case of a legitimately failing business, operating losses and not improper diversion of funds from the company, is the reason that it doesn't have enough money to pay all of its debts in full, so this remedy is not available. Winning a lawsuit simply gives you a piece of paper stating that the defendant owes you money which you can then use to seize money and property from the defendant and/or people who owe the defendant money, if you can find either of those things. But, you can't get blood out of a turnip, and the alternative formal collection mechanism (forcing an involuntary bankruptcy) requires the coordination of multiple significant creditors and may not provide much better results if the company has genuinely run out of money, although unpaid wages are often entitled to priority in bankruptcy up to a certain dollar amount which is a preference that is not generally available outside of bankruptcy court. There are sometimes laws that can be invoked to hold people affiliated with the management of a defunct business personally responsible for unpaid wages (sometimes the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), and sometimes state wage claim acts). And, very rarely in egregious cases that affect lots of people where there was an intent to stiff you before you finished earning new wages at the company, a local or state prosecutor will prosecute a company or its officers for "wage theft". Finally, "freelancers" often have far fewer rights in efforts to collect wages than true employees, so a mere independent contractor is in a weaker position and should consider that fact when deciding whether or not to settle. Bottom line: consider seriously accepting a settlement because the cost of collection and the unavailability of assets to collect from once it goes out of business may make a bird in the hand worth more than two in the bush.