If you have to ask....

Same here... no ill will intended. But I returned a big ticket item to a large local electronics store. Silly me, I forgot my card. Rather than trucking back home, the cashier allowed me to use another card for the refund, and the only other card I happened to have on me was my bank's debit card. The funds were put directly back into my checking account, and I kept the miles.

Thought about it,, but never did that again, intentionally or otherwise.

Getting miles for a balance transfer (or cash advance, for that matter)? Which banks/cards? I'm not aware of any (at least in the US). As far as taking advantage of zero interest loans, nothing wrong with that!

Not sure if this is still the case, but in the past the FirstUSA/BankOne/Chase United Airlines Gold Visa awarded miles (at the rate of 1/2 mile per dollar) for using their "convenience checks". Some months they would send special convenience checks with the 3% fee waived and you could write the check to yourself, deposit it in your bank account and then immediately make an online payment the day the charge posted to your Visa account. If you timed it just right, there was no interest so the miles were effectively free. I believe that they had a 10,000 mile annual limit per card on the miles you could earn this way.

Believe me--they would if they could. They don't have the systems in place and until they are able to track items right down to the serial/item number level its impractical to expect that they will. If you buy $100 in groceries on one card and $10 on another, then return a carton of milk, who's to say (at the bank level) which purchase it came from. I'm sure they will get there someday as the brother gets bigger but they aint there now and as I said, given how they shaft the consumer at every opportunity, my heart doesn't bleed for them when I find our a few clever folks find a way around.

So, instead, they stick it back to the merchant and put the responsibility in their merchant agreement, telling them they can lose their ability to accept plastic for non-compliance. The Best Buys of the world that sell electronic gear with serial numbers can incorporate this into the POS systems and relate specific goods to a specific credit card purchase. Smaller stores or stores that sell non-serialized items (such as socks) have a harder time. It requires manual scrutiny of the receipt. Enjoy the fun while you can because when RFID ( www.spychips.com ) becomes the prevailing POS and inventory technology (sooner then you think) even socks will have a unique number.

Someone mentioned Costco. Costco uses the manual scrutiny method. It�s hit or miss as to whether or not they will notice a different account number�depends on all the usual factors (how long the line behind you at the return counter is, whether or not the phone is ringing, IQ of CSR (though Costco tends to hire bright people, unlike Wal-Mart, et al.)) What they do tend to notice is whether or not you are asking for cash vs. a credit to your card when you bought someone on your card. If you show no receipt you get a store credit card now�they used to give cash.

We flagged customers like this at J.Crew when I worked there in college. We had a lot of housewives that would buy things at full-price and return them, only to buy them again later, deeply discounted. You'd see a lot of girls/women hording all the 4s and 6s (our most sold sizes) and then returning them and rebuying them (when they wouldn't be available on sale otherwise). The company put a lockdown on that.

These women were definitely abusing the system and playing off of sales associates with sales goals.

I don't think that they were being flagged as criminal so much as malicious shoppers who cut deeply into the bottomline.

You raise a good point, but opening a credit card, getting miles or points, then closing the card should be easier to track. When they do get to the point of being capable of tracking this activity, I think they're going to ambush a lot of people: close their frequent flyer or other loyalty account. The press they could generate might help deter others.

actually, the airlines dont care because they don't foot the bill for this activity. It is the merchant or the credit card company that pays. The credit card companies pay the airlines for the miles they award in the card programs. (you might recall that last year Amex bought a large chunk of miles from Delta... those miles are the miles Amex gives to carholders). So the airlines would actually make revenue from any such scams, although I doubt the volumes even register on the radar of the airline...

That's an excellent point, I hadn't thought of that. The damage to the airline is actually minimal. I suppose it's up to the credit card companies to clamp down.