When merchants go bad?

[Mel]

But one or more members take advantage of this and generate a large number of transactions that the merchant considers to be 'abuse' of the offer, and promptly terminates their relationship with imutual and refuses to pay for any outstanding transactions.

It should be incumbent upon the merchant not to make offers which they are not prepared to honour. If they are too careless to ensure that the offer cannot be abused that is their problem and they should pay up, and if they refuse then legal action should be taken.

[One Eyed Snake]

If they are too careless to ensure that the offer cannot be abused that is their problem and they should pay up, and if they refuse then legal action should be taken.

Presumably the contract that the merchant enters into with imutual allows them a get out - otherwise legal action should be the norm for reneging merchants.

[kevinchess1]

Any threat of legal action is Null and void if the merchant goes bust.

[Kelantan]

Any threat of legal action is Null and void if the merchant goes bust.

That may be true. But not in cases where they refuse to pay

[kevinchess1]

yes of course they should sue merchants who refuse to pay. I guess they don't because it cost too much.

[zulu17]

Is the contract between imutual and the merchant or is the merchant's contract with a affliate network who in turn has a contract with imutual. If that is the case presumably you have to sue the network who you rely upon dealing with many merchants.

[richard@imutual]

Is the contract between imutual and the merchant or is the merchant's contract with a affliate network who in turn has a contract with imutual.

It's generally the latter, but the contract will say that they are not liable to pay for transactions which are considered invalid by the merchant. It may well be challenge-able in the courts but for amounts of the order we're talking about, there is no way a company like ours could justify legal proceedings

[kevinchess1]

I like Kev's idea of a 50% payout where the member has made a cash outlay.

I guess the question is: why not 100%? If imutual can afford it. After all, the member has done nothing wrong

I'm not sayin I'm in favour of 50% payout, I'm just sayin TCB do that

I feel the key thing to remember here is that TCBother would make payments out of their pocket/profit whereas at IMutual the payment would come out of everybody pockets. Richard might decide if to make a payment but it's not actually his money in the first place.
Not havin ago at Richard I'm happy for him to use his discretion
but it's probably something that will need addressin at some point perhaps an AGM discusion