Ethical / legal question regarding Price Protection

[BirchBarlow]

Let's say one purchases an item online from a brick and mortar merchant online with their Discover card for $599.99.  Approximately two weeks later, the purchaser finds the aformentioned item marked down to $549.99 on the merchant's website.  The purchaser calls the merchant to request a price adjustment and the merchant obliges.  Shortly thereafter, the merchant promptly issues a $50 credit to the customer's Discover card.

Fast forward to July first, the Discover cardholder finds the item for sale by a third party Amazon merchant for $499.95.  Is it not unethical and/or illegal for the cardholder to claim the initial price of $599.99 when filing the request for the price protection claim?

[austinguy907]

Since it's a manual process for PP I would assume they would check the ledger and see you already got $50 back from the seller and give you the difference being the other $50.  Suppose they didn't check with the seller regarding the credit back to see if it was part of the original transaction it would be a double dip credit for $100 on top of the $50 discount.  It's not hard for most sellers to look up the transaction trail though to track your activity though.  

Now the brick matching the amazon price is highly unlikely since it's an online only sort of thing versus something that's local to you in your city for price comparison.  I'm sure that Disco has something in place for not giving away free money and would eventually catch it and charge it back to the account and/or take potential AA against the cardholder for doing said double dip.

[fltireguy]

Discover would never know. They have no way of knowing what that $50 refund was for, especially if the merchant is one that you go to regularly.

[Anonymous]

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@fltireguy wrote:
Discover would never know. They have no way of knowing what that $50 refund was for, especially if the merchant is one that you go to regularly.

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 This is ridiculously immoral. I really don't have much of anything else to say about this, but I don't think this is a reasonable way to behave.

[fltireguy]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@fltireguy wrote:
Discover would never know. They have no way of knowing what that $50 refund was for, especially if the merchant is one that you go to regularly.

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 This is ridiculously immoral. I really don't have much of anything else to say about this, but I don't think this is a reasonable way to behave.

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Yes, it is immoral - no question about it. I wasn't making my comment about the morality or the ethics of doing it - just that DIscover more than likely would never ever know that the refund pertained to that purchase

[Anonymous]

Fair enough; I believed you were implying that it was ok because Discover would never know. I apologize.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@fltireguy wrote:
Discover would never know. They have no way of knowing what that $50 refund was for, especially if the merchant is one that you go to regularly.

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 This is ridiculously immoral. I really don't have much of anything else to say about this, but I don't think this is a reasonable way to behave.

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Something about this site seems to cause a lot of hyperbole.

"Ridiculously immoral"?    Slightly immoral but not ridiculously so.   (I wouldn't advocate it though at least on grounds of risk/reward).   Have you ever exceeded a speed limit, overstayed at a parking meter, failed to declare out-of-state purchases on your tax return for use tax, told a lie or failed to tell the whole truth?  Also immoral.

Ridulously immoral for me starts more at burning down a building for insurance, without regard for the lives of people inside.   Hopefully fewer than 10% of forum members have done that more than once!

[Anonymous]

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Something about this site seems to cause a lot of hyperbole.

"Ridiculously immoral"?    Slightly immoral but not ridiculously so.   (I wouldn't advocate it though at least on grounds of risk/reward).   Have you ever exceeded a speed limit, overstayed at a parking meter, failed to declare out-of-state purchases on your tax return for use tax, told a lie or failed to tell the whole truth?  Also immoral.

Ridulously immoral for me starts more at burning down a building for insurance, without regard for the lives of people inside.   Hopefully fewer than 10% of forum members have done that more than once!

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I wasn't being remotely hyperbolic; I used ridiculous intentionally. In this case, the intended (and primary) meaning was that the immorality discussed was absurd. I definitely did not mean it as a degree of immorality.

I speed daily, regularly stretch parking meter times, definitely purchase online without regard to whether sales or use tax is charged, lie, hide the truth, etc. I'm no saint. Just as I think we can plainly say that I shouldn't do these things, we can also say that people shouldn't defraud credit card companies, whether the fraud be relatively innocuous like this or something more extreme like a misrepresentation of income and spending spree before bankruptcy. My point was simply that I found it comical that someone would ask a group of other people whether the fraud is immoral. I also found it amusing that a second person would point out that there is no real chance Discover would catch on.  

[Anonymous]

If you have to ask, you know the answer...any ? in general that makes you have to ask whether it's ethical/legal etc the action probably isn't.

[zerofire]

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@BirchBarlow wrote:

Let's say one purchases an item online from a brick and mortar merchant online with their Discover card for $599.99.  Approximately two weeks later, the purchaser finds the aformentioned item marked down to $549.99 on the merchant's website.  The purchaser calls the merchant to request a price adjustment and the merchant obliges.  Shortly thereafter, the merchant promptly issues a $50 credit to the customer's Discover card.

Fast forward to July first, the Discover cardholder finds the item for sale by a third party Amazon merchant for $499.95.  Is it not unethical and/or illegal for the cardholder to claim the initial price of $599.99 when filing the request for the price protection claim?

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Ethical: No

Legal: Ask Discover, they wrote the program terms.

Chance of getting caught: Low

You have to understand that legality and ethics are a bit different. For example it is not ethical to sell product to someone who is one nationality and not another but it is legal to do so. Then there is the chance that the oversight authority will catch you such as the people that speed by 5 over the limit. You really have to decide yourself if you want to risk it and take the consequences of getting caught.