JetAway

$550 is chump change. In the scheme of things, it's nothing. This thread is a total waste of time.

MSPeconomist

It's certainly less than the cost of a lawyer.

seenitall

To me this turns on how the TravelBank funds got into the OP's MP account.

If UA transferred them from the original purchaser's account to the OP's account, then the fraud was clearly committed by the original purchaser and UA's principal recourse was to try to reclaim the funds out of the OP's account. That they failed to do this for 5 months does not reflect to their credit. While UA can issue threats and close the OP's MP account, it is highly unlikely that they will try to go to court to collect this $550 -- especially because they don't have even close to a 100% chance of winning. As noted, they will pass this along to a collection agency who will also issue threats, but will also be unlikely to do anything more. As to whether UA can ban the OP from ever traveling on UA again, that would be a DoT issue.

If these funds were never in the original purchaser's account, but simply were purchased by a shady guy with an invalid credit card and who had them deposited directly into the OP's MP account, the OP is in a far stickier situation. In particular, UA will likely be alleging that either the OP was the shady purchaser who provided the invalid credit card, or that given that the OP was hiring the shady guy to do the purchase for him, it was his responsibility to confirm that the guy was using a valid means of payment. While it remains odd that it took UA 9 months to determine the payment was phony, the OP was the beneficiary and UA wants the cost of the ticket paid. Thus, unless the OP can tell a convincing story in court as to how he didn't know that TB funds were not transferable and how he didn't know that an invalid credit card was being used, he likely will be ordered to pay up.

Viper536

Not for nothing, but if one finds a thread to be a waste of time, one should simply stop reading, and responding to, said thread, rather than telling someone to shut up.

My opinion of the OP's situation aside, I've actually found parts of this thread enlightening, interesting, and so I'm okay wasting my time on this thread...

DoTheBartMan

But it's about "principle" for the OP, not the money.
The principle of being allowed to willingly engage in a shady transaction without the risk of repercussions, that is...

hughw

someone sells you a counterfeit ticket to the Super Bowl.....you manage to get in with it and are sitting in your 50yard line seat for the first quarter...Along comes Security with someone who has the real ticket and they throw you out of the Stadium...are you going to say that you paid for your seat and should be able to sit in it. I don't think so. In OP's case, they got away with sitting in the seat for the whole game and now the rightful owner is demanding that they get paid for it..seems pretty simple. OP tried to game the system, he lost, and he should take his marbles and go home and count himself lucky that UA will go away for $550.

Proudelitist

When I was a teenager I worked at an amusement park. We had a big problem with ticket scalpers. They would sometimes even forge tickets. Then they would hang around outside the ticket booths and offer cheaper tix to guests.

I remember one day a guy bought a ticket from a scalper. When he tried to access the park, he couldn't because the ticket was fraudulent. Completely counterfeit.

This guy had the nerve to demand that WE give him a refund, or issue him replacement tickets.

When I explained to him that we were not going to refund him on something he didn't buy from us in the first place, I was met with a stream of rationalizations..particularly the usual last-refuge of the unreasonable customer: "A goodwill gesture".

For some reason, the OP's story reminded me of that.

Steve M

To the OP: did you give your MileagePlus login credentials to the person that sold you the TravelBank funds?

kilo

Probably not a fair analogy even if the end result is correct.

It would more accurate if you said the Super Bowl ticket is actually genuine but the person who sold it obtained it by fraudulent means.

Xyzzy

I quoted the above because part of the TravelBank is/was the United Gift Registry. This allowed people to buy UA credit for you and to have it deposited into a MP account. In order to do this one did not need much information and certainly not the account password. In the last iteration of this one could, IIRC, just enter a first and last name and then select the recipient from a list.

S, the OP here did not need to provide the seller with a tremendous amount of information in order to receive a deposit. In fact, the seller could have just used the stolen/hacked CC to make the purchase directly without any transfer from an existing account -- nobody has stated here whether such a transfer was even allowed.

John Aldeborgh

I'll add, if it's about the principal, then we should ask the OP if his principals allow him to use the services of UA (or any company) without paying for those services, because that is exactly what he did. If anybody misled the OP it was the individual from whom he purchased the travel bank dollars, not UA. The only thing UA did was provide a service for which they rightfully deserve to be paid and were not.

sexykitten7

Reminds me of this scam. I bought one once before realizing it was likely fraudulent. Thankfully my subscription lasted and Hulu never contacted me. Hulu cancelled people's remaining subscription but never accused them of anything shady or retroactively charged them. They certainly did not threaten a civil suit! Ebay pulled all Hulu gift cards some time ago and that's probably for the best.

I believe United could learn a thing or two from this situation. Namely, don't blame your customers and go after the criminals directly (as they already do on craigslist, etc.).

Steve M

We're definitely thinking along the same lines here, but there's a crucial step that I think you're missing: the creation of the Gift Registry. Unless I'm mistaken, you couldn't just go the Gift website and look up any MP member by name. First, the member themselves had to create the registry while logged into their account.

So, if our Gift Registry theory is correct, then the chronology of what happened might be something like this:
- Someone logged into the OP's MP account created a gift registry
- Soon thereafter, a gift was purchased by the seller and deposited into that registry using a stolen credit card, whose funds then became available in the OP's Travel Bank.
- The OP purchases a ticket using those funds and flies it.
- Some time later, a chargeback comes through to United. Maybe some period of time elapses before enough of these happen where a pattern emerges as to what's going on.
- UA shuts down OP's account and demands payment for the flight taken using bad funds.

This is all of course speculation at this point. The key point in this is that it if that's what happened, it would involve the creation of a Gift Registry while logged into the OP's account. If the above is close to what happened, then there's a missing step here: who created the gift registry?

Perhaps the OP can confirm whether they did this themselves (at the direction of the seller), or gave the seller their credentials. Or perhaps the Gift Registry had nothing to do with this situation.

tom911

In this case, though, if a stolen credit card was used, or the OP was provided with a fictitious name that matches the stolen credit card (recall he identified the person he traded with as a "stranger"), how does UA even identify "who" the criminal is? Could it be that traumamed is the only person they can pursue to make them whole?

Baze

I don't think there is any proof the funds were ever in an original account, but the fraudster most like said would transfer them but those did not exist, I would bet the fraudster just used the fraudulent payment method to directly deposit the funds into the OP's travel bank. This is the only scenario that really makes sense to me. OP benefited from using tickets on UA flights but those tickets were never paid for legitimately. What OP paid to the fraudster is irrelevant. OP owes the money to UA as UA provided a service to the OP but never got paid for the service as they found the funds used were not legitimate.

Sorry OP, but your principles in this situation mean nothing, you received a service and the service was never properly paid for. You owe the money.