[asciident]

Thanks for the reply. There is a clear difference between claiming extra insurance money and what I'm doing: lying to get more insurance money is fraud, while what I'm doing is exactly what the service is intended for (sending money to others for free).

But using your framework of, "if everyone did this, how would this affect the business and others using the business," then I (and many others) are doing a lot of other unethical things. Ad blocking and card counting (in blackjack) clearly would be deemed unethical under this criteria, but here's a bunch of other more tangible examples.

There's a popular pastry place that has 50% off sales on Sunday afternoon because they are closing Monday so they sell the remaining stock at a significant discount before close. I only go there on Sunday afternoons, but if everyone did that, then the prices would go up for all.

Another thing I do is using the books, video games, movies, and streaming services offered by my library and never buy any real media. But if everyone did this, then bookstores, theaters, and streaming companies would go bankrupt.

[Gpetrium]

You may be following the letter of the law but not the spirit of the law.

The cashback was created as an incentive, you found a way to exploit the business model for personal gain in ways that can have an impact on others ability to enjoy the system while having a material impact on the provider of the service. Most in your position will say "but I am only a small piece of the cog" however, if a small minority starts to think the same way, it can have a real impact on a variety of things, including trust between parties.

Everyone tries to rationalize their actions, whether it is or becomes socially acceptable is another matter.

[scarface74]

Well, everyone that takes a VC subsidized ride on Uber is also having a negative impact on their business. If the business makes rules that are unsustainable for their business, it’s their fault. They could very easily set limits to curb abuse.

[IanCal]

Uber are obviously trying to get people to use their service. If using their service is bad for them, that's their fault because they were deliberately trying to encourage a behaviour that was detrimental to their business.

That is different from finding a way through the rules which is clearly unintended.

[FPGAhacker]

You don't think offering cash back is a way to get people to use their service?

[IanCal]

Of course it is. Do you really think that they wanted to pay eighteen thousand dollars for someone to rapidly transfer money back and forth?

[scarface74]

Hopefully they had the financial wherewithal to model outliers in their profit model.

[Starknaked]

It's not the user's responsibilty to ensure these incentives are sustainable. Look at what happened with the Hoover free flight program.

[IanCal]

The user is the one, well, using it! Sure, in some cases it's not obvious if you're abusing the system but this seems pretty clear.

[Starknaked]

The best way I've seen businesses get around this issue is to just have an upper limit on the incentive like interest applies only to the first $x. Its often a nice bonus for people that were going to use them anyway but not enough for people to justify exploiting the incentive alone.

[IanCal]

> while what I'm doing is exactly what the service is intended for

The service was intended to pay you significant sums to move money back and forth?

[Not_anchovie]

Interesting discussion. Certainly, some of this fails simply by not agreeing upon what is ethical. For instance, people can claim that blocking ads is an unethical action, but if the ads themselves are attempting illegal things (and some are), then blocking ads has a quite legitimate and useful purpose.