Originally Posted by
CPRich
Yes, they are "legal". Very little in awards programs can be done that would violate the law and have the police come after you.
But I suspect that this would violate the terms and conditions of the programs. You won't get arrested, but you could forfeit all of you accumulated points.
How can they do it? It's not illegal or against the program T&C to be an intermediary to such a transaction. You lose the points, LoyaltyMatch has no liability/damage.
Note the weasel words buried deep in the fine print - "In making a reward purchase or trade, you warrant and covenant to LoyaltyMatch that: (a) you are legally able to trade the rewards through the LoyaltyMatch Site, (b) you have read and agreed to the terms and conditions of for the loyalty or rewards program from which you are listing rewards to buy or trade on the LoyaltyMatch Site, and, (c) your offer to buy or trade will not violate the terms and conditions of your respective Loyalty Program as they pertain to you. "
I.e. - you are stating/committing that you have verified the T&Cs of your program and are allowed to do this.
So when you get smacked, they just say "but you stated to us that it was OK and we accepted your word - your mistake, not ours"
I am chuckling; I don't think that the OP meant "legal" in the sense of being subjected to criminal prosecution, I think that he meant "legal" in the sense of compliance with the T&C of the program.
Otherwise, good points. It seems clear that this program violates the T&C of most or all loyalty programs. One can come up with some pretty good spin (and pshuang did -- funny indeed that it's better than that of the company founder), but none of that changes the fact that one is simply using such a program (or CC of FT) to sell or barter loyalty points.
Most of us on FT should be happy about the existence of such T&C, because, although it makes it harder to redeem our own points, imagine how much of an order of magnitude the value of points would be further diluted if they were truly liquid on an open market. Yikes.