What approach do you take to terms and conditions? In the business world I have mentioned how I have broken terms, conditions and rules to get to goal, so I am no stranger to doing so, but in doing so I also had my own set of ethics that I followed. I might go so far as to say that I view my own underlying set of moral and ethical guidelines as the baseline rule, regardless of legality.
While that may sound odd, it is actually pretty common. There are many people, particularly those in the lower-to-middle class that just don’t feel ‘comfortable’ with acting fully within their legal rights on matters, typically when they are looking into leveraging loopholes that the very rich have embedded into the system for their own benefit.
When it comes to terms and conditions and finding loopholes I see two main camps – and I don’t really know which one is better than the other… maybe you can tell me?
- In the blue corner we have those that will exploit a legal error or omission for their own good. Specifically they will have no qualms whatsoever in abusing the heck out of a program or system even if they know if it is ‘wrong’ or a ‘mistake’ on behalf of the company. These folks would be willing to challenge a company in court based purely on rule of law, knowing full well they were getting away with something that perhaps they shouldn’t.
- In the red corner are those that don’t pay any regard to the Terms and Conditions at all, they just do whatever they like, to their own moral compass.
Ironically, I think that many people might consider the guys in the Red corner to be villains, but the guys in the blue corner to be honorable. I think it is a trend of the litigious nature of our society that allows this thinking to flourish. In truth, perhaps neither of these groups are right, or wrong for that matter.
I am clearly in the red corner. And it makes me react strangely to other people’s actions. For example yesterday I saw a tweet from someone asking @americanairlines if they were allowed to use an AA gift card to pay for taxes on an award flight. I own several AA gift cards, paid for with good money (well OK, they were paid for by using up my Amex Plat $200+$500 statement credits… against their terms and conditions…) and as far as American is concerned they got paid and I got a gift card.
So anyway, I am holding an AA giftcard and they slam me with Taxes and Fees on an award ticket, of course I should be able to pay those fees with it, why the hell not?
- I gave AA Cash, they deposited it in the bank (and benefit from an interest free loan from me)
- They gave me a promissory note for the equal value.
Sure, taxes and fees are often collected on behalf of someone else aren’t profit for the airline, but so what? You got my money, you had your fun with it, now I am cashing it in and you need to go pay the fees Mr American.
A clause in the Terms and Conditions that prohibits that is in my opinion unfair. So, what I would do is not ask @americanairlines if it was ‘allowed or not’ I would just go out there and try to pay with a gift card. If there wasn’t a place to do so on the website I might even call in and try for a manual override- then eventually I would give up, and probably be snarky.
You see, us ‘reds’ know that if the Ts&Cs say one thing, it doesn’t mean that the system underlying it knows that. Frequently people who code the payment systems aren’t able to understand the pages of legalize that companies produce so there is a disconnect. As a red, at times like this, should a disconnect appear I wouldn’t feel bad about using it.
What do you think? Are you a blue or a red, or is it all black and white?
I do both. Abide by and exploit. There may have also been some cases where i have broken the tcs in knowing the entity wont know if no one calls them or write about it. And if they look the other way until they have a reason to look at you. A soon to be ending 14 year long gig may be an example of this.
But one must also remember this about tcs:
A company can put ANYTHING in the tcs. But not all of it is enforceable or maybe even legal in all places! So even if they think you broke the tcs and you take them to court, it could come down to how a judge or magistrate interprets things while acting within the laws and rules in his or her own state. And, how a legal stance sides as well.
Banks may shut people down and cite BSA 1970 and then say that once a person is shut down they lose all points. But i would combat this and force SCC to get them to reveal why they shut down an account. I would argue bait and switch and claim that the reason they shut down the acct was BECAUSE I had uber points and they just didnt want to give them to me. And that they are pulling a reversal by saying they can just shut me down without cause. Go to court and force an answer. Likely, the bank will settle because hey, they dont want to give one or have a judge cite them on a public record for having something bogus discovered in their tcs.
Both?! You are such a bad person… 🙂 And I agree with what you say here.
Lol I guess that depends on one’s interpretation of the meaning of the word, exploit, and whether it denotes something bad or not 😀
MM makes a very, very important point: T&C are always written for the benefit of the bank, not you. And whether or not they are legal, or especially whether or not they are ethical is certainly not parsed when they are being written.
If I use my card in a manner that’s outside the T&C, and they get a benefit from it, they’ll definitely look the other way. If their perception of the balance of good–theirs is too little, mine is too great–changes, then and only then will they shut me down. That’s not written in the T&C, but it’s inherent in them.
I would much prefer to know that I have a solid moral compass of my own, and when in a grey area, I can consult it, rather than the compass of a bank, any day. Banks and those who run them are not high on my list of moral organizations, after all.
And MickiSue makes a very good point as well. The bank may not be acting out of ethics and law but solely out of what gives them profit and keeps them out of the public disclosure
When it comes to banks or any quasi-financial institutions, I think of them as crooks first, and act accordingly. If anyone thinks a bank, insurance company, broker et al gives a damn what is legal or ethical, they are delusional.
Take the latest financial crisis – the Banksters knew the mortgages they were flogging fetid garbage. The brokers knew the packages of MBS were turds destined to fail (GS even set up MBS they knew were almost certain to fail and allowed clients to short them). AIG “insured” hundreds of billions because they were “AAA” paper (so long as property values never declined more than 5% – face palm). Everyone knew it was a scam (or if they didn’t they were grossly incompetent). We know about the unbelievable problems with bankruptcies and improper evictions by the mortgage holders – all done “legally” until people started to did beneath the surface and found gross negligence and incompetence.
And did anyone of the tens of thousands of crooks go to jail, or even get their hand slapped? Nope. And now we have the enabler-in-chief, Geithner pimping his book and offering incredulous explanations why the very scum who created the problem needed to be bailed out – while Joe and Jane Average American were made to suffer. The Fed could have bailed out the homeowners, made them whole, and the bankers wouldn’t have been forced to take massive write downs. But nope, the solution was to let homeowners fail, sending huge numbers of middle class into bankruptcy, let the banksters foreclose and repossess, take big tax loss deductions, then sell the homes at pennies on the dollar to Hedge Funds specifically funded to buy up those foreclosed homes and sell/rent back to the very same saps who were scammed in the first place. To recoup all those losses, the banksers were given 0% interest loans from the Fed and allowed to immediately reinvest in 3% Government Bonds – a guaranteed, zero risk profit which allowed banksters to keep gargantuan salaries and benefits. If I hadn’t lived thru it, wouldn’t have believed it possible. And yet here we are 5-6 years later and it’s virtually forgotten. It’s business as usual (ie, scam as much as you possibly can and then offer a mea culpa, pay a slap-on-the-wrist fine and repeat).
Talk about the Twilight Zone.
Paul that is basically why I can justify any iffy part of this game or any part of this craft that neighbors who do not MS would think is not right or ethical. Not only are they wrong, but we are the only ones getting back just a little for the customer.
I couldn’t agree more about the banks being scumbags, and I too feel a certain ‘ease of mind’ with regard to such things because of that. However there is also a slight conflict as I try to keep consistency in my approach towards people (and entities) regardless of how they act.
But yeah… I see it as a game of us and them ultimately.
I agree. And its not like I am actively out there trying to screw anything over but the way I see it, if a bank leaves the door open in these deals, I am walking in. Mainly because they are incompetent and should design things better if they want things stopped. If they dont want things stopped, then all the more reason to continue doing what we do.
Interestingly enough, I will add that the miles and points and cash back set would likely never steal money. For example: If the bank left the door litterally open and the safe open too, we would probably notify the authorities. It’s not to ruin the bank that we are after, its to continue to make them work for us.
I dont know how else to put it.
Can someone explain to me the logic behind leaving badly worded “comments” on an old blogpost, in the interest of…what? Getting someone to look up the user name?
Then they can think, “Wow! This person who’s using someone else’s blog to spam their own agenda is JUST the person I was looking for!”??
That’s likely to happen, isn’t it?
It’s done by bots- they can lead people to things despite the poor wording.
So…spam a few tens of thousands blogs a day, and get, maybe, 100 hits?
I need a shower.
Yep, and also is good for backlinks to domains. Seems silly but when automated it’s easy for them to do.
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