is it illegal to refund more than the original purchase and to a different card?
 

is it illegal to refund more than the original purchase and to a different card?

Specifics please.

This. I don't think it's illegal per se but I'm also not sure why a merchant would agree to do this (except maybe if you paid part of the purchase in cash, but I would think that they'd refund the cash part to you in cash).

I wouldn't think any more illegal than getting cashback on your credit card (as in you make a purchase, then get $40 more and they charge it all to your cc)

Illegal? No. Why would it be? There's nothing criminal about what is, essentially, a cash advance. Nor is it criminal to refund a returned purchase in a particular way (unless the refund is in the form of cocaine I suppose).

Is it permitted by the contract(s) the merchant has with Visa, MC, etc? Who knows. Even if it isn't allowed per their contract, that's not the same as "illegal".

Reading between the lines of OP, it sounds like OP would buy an item on sale, and so that (automatic ?) sale price return would not kick in when returning the item once sale is over. Provided merchant did not require sales receipt.

Actually, I've had Home Depot refund me in cash before because the barcode on the receipt couldn't be scanned. I'm not sure what they would have done had the rest of the receipt not been readable, however (or if the receipt didn't exist at all).

You had a receipt though. Home Depot had a reasonably high level of confidence they knew what you paid. Merchants are very hesitant to provide cash/credit refunds without a receipt due to a high risk of fraud.

Agreed. FWIW, in my experience at other stores, they typically give you store credit (assuming they allow the return at all).

Most of the time retailers do refunds back to original card number, or sometimes a store gift card (if for some reason that card has expired or something).

Occasionally I've had Costco refund me in cash, but they can see my entire order history because that's a membership store.

And they have a better handle on what's legit, and a generous return policy to begin with.

Medical Service Providers however have given check refunds for services prepaid for with cards, that ended being reimbursed (to the vendor) by the health care insurer.

I'm not sure why (and its not a real useful MS opportunity) but maybe its easier for their systems to handle it through an A/P process, rather than a customer refund process.

Or maybe they have some dollar threshold, and once the number is > $500 or what not, they require A/P to be involved.

Plus a refund to a card will usually mean a claw-back of points - so why would you want to do this? Unless you are refunding to a non-points card to avoid the claw-back - but I've never met a merchant who would do this. Not illegal (unless done for fraudulent purposes) but not really done

This speculation can go on forever, We have no idea what the OP wanted to accomplish and without details, providing advice about what is and what is not illegal is a poor idea.

At least in the case of Chase, the additional bonus points (if any) aren't clawed back. For instance, getting a refund at Costco last quarter would effectively have resulted in getting 4x points for your purchase instead of 5x. :cool:

But yeah, generally speaking, I'd expect all of the points to be clawed back unless there are datapoints proving otherwise.