Implicit lottery: what if there is no prize? I often receive emails asking me to do something in exchange of potentially getting some prize (e.g. Amazon Gift Card). Example 1: A great bonus is that if you download Riffiti in the next 48 hours from receiving this email, you could win a $100 Amazon Gift Card. Example 2: Attend the session this Thursday 3pm-5pm in 32-124. Refreshments will be served. You can also win a couple giftcards by responding via their google doc! Example 3: The study involves completing a 20-45 minute online questionnaire. You will have the opportunity to enter a lottery to win a $250 Amazon.com gift card. Example 4: Teams that come up with the best plan will be entered into a lottery to win an extra $20 Amazon gift card. Example 5: Bring Your Own Mug and Win a $10 Gift Card from Flour - Everyone who brings their own mug and helps to reduce waste can enter a raffle for a $10 flour gift card. Example 6: If you fill this form, we'll enter you in raffle for several $50 Amazon gift cards. Are senders obliged to actually gave the announced prize to someone? Or can they simply have no prize at all? Assumes that everything happens in the United States, and more specifically in California or in Massachusetts.
In California, this is automatically a violation of section 17539.1(a)(7) of the Business and Professions Code: (a) The following unfair acts or practices undertaken by, or omissions of, any person in the operation of any contest or sweepstakes are prohibited: (7) Failing to award and distribute all prizes of the value and type represented.
Explanatory note #176 on the Gambling Act 2005 specifies: There are some exceptions to the general prohibition on gambling by children and young people. Children and young persons may participate in all forms of private or non-commercial gaming and betting. Young persons may participate in lotteries and pool betting on association football. Children and young persons may use the category of gaming machine with the lowest stakes and prizes (Category D). They may also take part in equal chance prize gaming at certain premises, as provided under Part 13 of the Act. Cribbage and Dominoes are both exempt forms of "Equal Chance Gambling" which can be played on alcohol licensed premises (e.g. pubs). As @richardb points out, while young people (i.e. your son) are normally allowed to take part in Equal Chance Gambling there are explicitly excluded from doing so on alcohol-licensed premises using the "Exempt gaming" provisions as outlined in Sec.280 Children and young people must be excluded from the gaming. So you can't play for money (assuming the absence of a suitable Family Entertainment Centre license or similar), however playing not-for-stakes doesn't fit the definition of "Gambling" in terms of the act. Gambling is defined as either "Gaming", "Betting" or a "Lottery" It's not "gaming" without a prize: In this Act “gaming” means playing a game of chance for a prize. It's not "betting" without a prize: For the purposes of section 9(1) a person makes a bet (despite the fact that he does not deposit a stake in the normal way of betting) if— (a)he participates in an arrangement in the course of which participants are required to guess any of the matters specified in section 9(1)(a) to (c), (b)he is required to pay to participate, and (c)if his guess is accurate, or more accurate than other guesses, he is to— (i)win a prize, or (ii)enter a class among whom one or more prizes are to be allocated (whether or not wholly by chance). And it's not a Lottery either (I won't quote the whole section here as it's a bit wordy but you can check for yourself here) So as long as there is literally no stakes or prize (whether money or otherwise) you can play with a young person in a pub.
"Fraud" is roughly lying to get something that isn't yours - for example, my money. It turns from attempted fraud to fraud at the point where I would be defrauded if we both take no further action. That would often be the point where I hand over the money, for example if you offer goods for sale that don't exist and that you don't intend to deliver. If you fill out a form and forge my signature to get money, and send it off to someone who will give you the money, it would be fraud at the point where I lose my money if we both take no further action. That might be the second where you drop the letter in the mailbox.
Potentially -- this is almost exactly how Pachinko parlors in Japan operate, with non-cash prizes being given out, but with &quot;known&quot; nearby establishments (sometime located in the same physical building) that will buy them for cash. Other options include the giving of vouchers/gift cards as prizes. Whether this is legal or not is a question of if the buyer is &quot;truly&quot; acting independent of the gambling establishment. The general legal term for this is &quot;arm's length transactions&quot;. A completely unrelated organization is presumed to be acting in its own best interest, in an &quot;arm's length&quot; manner, though this can be overcome with evidence of collusion. If the casino is willing to &quot;buy back&quot; its marker at a given price (much like Las Vegas casinos are required to do), this can be done with independent intermediary negotiators in a legitimate arm's length transaction. In the Japan example above a &quot;three-shop system&quot; of nominally independent shops circle goods between them to effectively &quot;legalize&quot; (or at least not draw the ire of authorities over) cash gambling payouts.
am I required to send the stuff back? No, but you should be able to prove that you met the conditions of the original contract between you two. There is no gift. There is a compensation that forms part of the contract between the offeror and you. The offeror's preference to call it a "gift" does not change the legal fact that his offer and your acceptance to complete Nightwave Season 2 constitutes the formation of a contract. From that standpoint, you are entitled to keep the items he mailed to you as long as you honor your part in that contract. You are right by conjecturing that a party is not allowed to unilaterally alter a contract. Any modification has to be agreed upon by all parties to that contract. However, a consent or agreement may be inferred from the parties' subsequent conduct. Hence the best way to pre-empt or supersede any such inference consists of letting that party know that you disapprove of the belated alteration(s). The absence of a written agreement can only complicate matters, though, since it appears that neither party has an objective, directly credible way to prove the terms of the original contract. Perhaps such terms can be deduced from the subsequent emails that he has been sending you, but that is impossible to ascertain without knowing the wording of the subsequent communications between you two. Lastly, enforceability of your contract is less clear if completing Nightwave Season 2 through someone else's performance amounts to an unlawful act. Not being knowledgeable of the terms and conditions of that game (?), I am unable to state with certainty whether the offeror could lawfully recover from you the items he mailed.
Does Bob have a case/standing? Yes, this is a reasonably straightforward contract dispute. Once you contract to do something and you then don't do it, you are liable for damages. Contractual damages are assessed on an expectation basis - the innocent party is entitled to be placed financially in the same position as though the contract had been completed without the breach. Bob is entitled to have the item and not to be out-of-pocket more than he agreed to pay. But ... There may not be a contract - see What is a contract and what is required for them to be valid? A contract is formed when the parties reach an agreement and most website terms and conditions are clear that this is NOT when the customer pays for it. For example, Amazon says: The Order Confirmation E-mail is acknowledgement that we have received your order, and does not confirm acceptance of your offer to buy the product(s) ordered. We only accept your offer, and conclude the contract of sale for a product ordered by you, when we dispatch the product to you and send e-mail confirmation to you that we've dispatched the product to you (the &quot;Dispatch Confirmation E-mail&quot;). So, here, two things have to happen before Amazon and you have a contract: they have to physically dispatch the goods and they have to send you an email saying they have. If they do one without the other, there is no contract. If your vendor has similar terms, you don't have a contract with them and are not entitled to contractual damages. You would not have a case in equity because they were clear that there was no contract until these things happened. You might be able to argue negligence if they sent the email without dispatching the goods but your damage basis would be different. Tort damage is calculated on a restoration basis, not an expectation basis, so you can recoup your losses but not claim any lost profits. It makes no difference here but if you had had a buyer who was going to pay you twice the price you paid, in contract you are entitled to the lost profit, in tort, you aren't. However, if the contract has a dispute resolution clause, that would normally have to be complied with before you can go to court. In some cases, this may prevent going to court at all, for example, if the dispute resolution clause included binding arbitration or expert determination. If there is a choice of law clause then this will usually be binding, however, if this is a consumer contract in New Zealand then NZ consumer law will apply in addition. Similarly, courts will usually observe a choice of venue clause. With what reasonable time lapse between (false) shipment notification of the original order and placing the eBay order? A reasonable time. Depends on what the product is and what normal delivery times are. For a 5mm screw, a reasonable time is probably measured in months. For an aircraft carrier it's probably measured in decades. Does this sort of a claim fall under the jurisdiction of small claims court (given that the amount is less than the threshold)? Neither New Zealand nor England &amp; Wales (bearing in mind Scotland and Northern Ireland are different jurisdictions) have small claims courts. The correct venue in New Zealand is the Disputes Tribunal which is not a court, and in England and Wales it is the County Court. Procedurally, would it be more advantageous for Bob to file the claim in the UK or in New Zealand? Ask a lawyer in each jurisdiction. Now Bob wants to claim damages from the store in the amount &quot;Total for the eBay order less total for the original store order&quot; — on top of full refund of the original order. Bob is not entitled to a refund. He is entitled to damages. A more accurate way to state the damages is the total for the eBay order and to not make any mention of a refund.
If two parties have a contract, where one party is required to do X in exchange for the other party doing Y, then the terms specified in that contract would determine what happens. You would have to see exactly what it says, especially if the other party has the option to not give you money. A contract might say "A shall at his option give B $5,000 by date X; if A elects not to make payment, notice must be given 60 days before X". Failing to give timely notice is thus breech of contract. However if the clause only says "A shall at his option give B $5,000 by date X", then there is no requirement for advance notice. And this assumes that there is a contract whereby both parties have some obligation to the other. A gift, on the other hand, carries no obligations on the giving party. There may be some social code to the effect that they should have told you by now, but failing to give advance notice is at most rude and certainly not legally actionable.
Congrats, you've done well to minimize your processing of personal data. But I think you're still processing personal data, and are subject to the GDPR. Serving a website necessarily involves processing an IP address. This IP address will typically be personal data. While you are not storing the IP address, the GDPR's definition of “processing” extends beyond storage and pretty much covers doing anything with that IP address. As far as I know this is not an entirely settled matter, but it's better to err on the side of caution and to assume that you are in fact performing a processing activity. Even a static web page can easily lead to additional relevant processing of personal data, for example if the HTML embeds resources from third party domains. Since your website is clearly targeted at the public, it does not fall under the GDPR's exception for “purely personal or household” purposes. So I think you do need a (minimal) privacy notice that contains at least the items mentioned in Art 13 GDPR. The main reason why some people try to avoid posting a privacy notice is because it must disclose your identity and contact details. But in Germany, that information has to be provided anyway due to the Impressumspflicht. As part of your GDPR compliance obligations, you must protect how data is processed by others on your behalf. A hosting provider will typically act as your data processor. For this to be legal, you need a contract / data processing agreement that fulfills the conditions in Art 28 GDPR. This contract binds the data processor to only use the data as instructed by you, and not for their own purposes. European hosting providers sometimes include the necessary terms in their terms of service / AGB, but you should check to make sure. Netcup expects you to accept their data processing amendment in your account settings. In the hypothetical case that you were not processing any personal data at all, the GDPR would not apply and it wouldn't require you to post a privacy notice. Other laws might still have information obligations, notably the German TMG and TTDSG.