Practice vs. theory
 

If this were in the USA, not Canada, which it isn't and this were the first year of law school, not the real world, those who suggest that this practice is unlawful are technically correct. It may be unlawful under Canadian law, but I don't know.

However, useless the program may be, miles/points always have some cost to somebody. If the goal is get consumers to spend in certain ways, the clerk is taking the benefit for his own and whoever pays for the points thinks he is building customer loyalty.

That is a classic wire fraud under US law.

Now, the practical. Will anybody get caught and would anybody prosecute? Not very likely. But, doesn't make it right.

MR's on the other hand are neither unlawful nor typically violative of program rules. After all, a pax buys a ticket, flies a segment and gets credit for flying the segment. Whether you fly because you have been directed to for business, for vacation or because you want to earn miles, is not material.

Mint / churning and the like may be, depending on how a given individual goes about it and his/her provable motivations actually be wire frauds and/or money laundering. But, each fact pattern is different.

Tesco (a supermarket in the UK) employees do that sometimes. You get loyalty points when you shop over there. They are supposed to ask you if you have your clubcard. This is scanned before you are billed for the items you have purchased and you are supposed to get the points credited to your clubcard account.

If you say that you dont have a clubcard, I have seen employees scanning other cards(Could be their own!!!). Obviously this is not company policy to scan a dummy card as not all of them do it!!!

Not sure but he is certainly violating some Shell / Air Canada policy or other. There was a similar case in the USA where some gas station employee was caught taking cash from customers but charging the purchase to his own credit card. Again, I am not sure if that was deemed illegal, maybe not, but he was in some trouble with employer / cc company.

+1

This is no more "unethical" as the mint coins, or mileage running, or scheduling 23hr connections to get "free" stopovers.

I agree. Depending on just how many points he has accumulated this way, he could be one of the speakers at a FT DO. :D

Wow, I can't believe the bickering here over something so petty. This story reminds me of when I was 16 and working as a cashier at Kroger. During the holidays (October and November) they had a deal where you spend $500 and get a free turkey or something stupid like that and they would track it using your shopper’s card. Anyway, for the prior 6 months or so when a customer didn't have their card, I would scan mine. I can’t remember one customer getting mad over the fact that I would scan my card so they could get discounts but that's beside the point. One day in early November I was called into the manager’s office with another cashier and he presented me with a sheet of paper saying that the card that was registered to me had spent $12,XXX and another cashier had spent $5,XXX. He asked me how I had spent that much money and I told him the truth about what I was doing and what I had done since I started working the cash register. Keep in mind I was 16, living with my parents in an upper class neighborhood, had 2 cars, and could care less about free turkey. My mom had shopped at this grocery store for as long as I could remember and most of the management knew her as she was in there at least twice a week and would do special orders etc., often. The manager was cool about the whole thing and just asked us not to redeem the free turkeys. Given my spend I could have had 24 turkeys and the manager jokingly said that I alone would clean out the store’s inventory.

Anyway, I from the OP's post it does suggest that the cashier is defrauding the company, but for what, 2 miles every time someone fills up without their own card? Give me a break; some of you are taking this way too seriously. Chances are the company is able to track this and this guy(kid?) will likely be figured out before he even has enough miles for a one way coach ticket if he is even there long enough to accumulate the miles.

No, these cards are not issued by Shell, and people do not make payments on them. It is more like a supermarket loyalty card.

Not the same, customer paid for the purchase, clerk picked up the "unclaimed" loyalty points.

Please people... if you do not know what an Air Miles card is and have never used one, keep your wild accusations to yourself.

I hope this is trolling, because I didn't know there was such thing as "dirty" loyalty points you could launder across non-existent states in Canada.

That's why I had written "similar". :)

Except that it's not even remotely similar.

The similarity, the common qualitative element, is that in each case an employee processed customers' purchases through his own membership account, without informing the customer, in order to earn a few points for himself.

FWIW, while it is likely to be against some T&C or other, I don't think this is any worse that what we FT'ers routinely do in our own battles of wits against airlines, hotels, and car companies.

Ah but the gas station guy is a kettle not a frequent flyer so it's entirely different (Yes that is sarcasm btw)

If the employee is using his own card to collect points it is theft, as he is stealing from his employer, who has to buy the points from Air Miles.

No different than him entering a $ off coupon after the fact and keeping the money.

Clearly the only solution is a new federal "Mileage Security Agency" to help prevent such horrible abuses of mileage programs. This job creating program will ensure safety for all mileage users.

I used to work as a cashier at a regional grocery store in the U.S. and whenever people didn't have a membership card I would either scan the store's card or scan my own. I guess you could say I would get benefits on my card, but rarely useful ones (lets face it, I wasn't buying turkeys as a 17 year old). I mainly did it because I wanted to minimize the complaining, "but that's supposed to be that price!" and get customers in and out faster and happier. I'm not saying that all cashiers that scan other cards do it for this purpose, I'm merely suggesting that it is a possibility they are doing it for customer service and sanity reasons. In any case, I'm pretty sure I made more of a profit searching for lost coins and can return deposit tickets stuck under the belt.

I wasn't trolling and I agree nobody will probably go after the clerk. However, it is clearly illegal, regardless if u think there are no state lines in Canada.

States/provinces/auto nomous regions whatever.

The main thing is that a greedy clerk does this long enough and an IRs or Cra agent is his customer and they may rat on him.

+1 to this: