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by Dylan16807 4523 days ago
It's not fraud to order a bunch of pizzas and then cancel the order 30 seconds later before they even put anything on the first piece of dough.

It's dickish, but no actual harm is done.

And if it cost $1 per cancelled pizza they would actually profit off of it.
2 comments
hangonhn 4523 days ago
"It's dickish, but no actual harm is done."

In the case of a real restaurant, yes there is harm done. The cost of taking an order is not zero for people: it cost people time and real customers may not be served in time. Maybe not for this particular case with Gett since they're automated.

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Dylan16807 4523 days ago
It's still not fraud to call someone and waste their time for a while. See also: telemarketers
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hangonhn 4523 days ago
Fraud is only one type of harm. The bigger question is whether there is harm, regardless of type. In the restaurant case, there is harm even though it's not fraud. In Gett's case it's not really fraud either but one can argue there was harm done as well. Information can confer competitive advantage. The question that remains is who's fault it is. It's kind of dumb on Gett's part to leave themselves wide open. I'm not experienced enough in jurisprudence to really determine that.
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kd0amg 4523 days ago
Wasting their time via deception might be though.
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avalaunch 4523 days ago
What you describe is a hoax, contrasted to fraud in that there was no intent of gain on the perpetrator's part and that no harm was caused (debatable in your example). What Uber did, and in my example, there was both intent of gain and harm.

You could argue that there was no harm to Gett because of the cancellation fees, but that's only true if the cancellation fees are greater than the cost they incurred which may or may not be true.

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Dylan16807 4523 days ago
It hinges on whether there was harm done. I strongly doubt there was harm.

Or at least intentional harm. Such as if they meant to cancel immediately but didn't.

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6d0debc071 4523 days ago
> It hinges on whether there was harm done.

Are you a lawyer familiar with fraud related laws in New York?

IANAL. However, in the UK I suspect it would hinge on whether you gained or whether there was harm. Fraud by false representation is - IRC - defined in those sorts of terms in the Fraud Act 2006.

Point being this stuff varies and doesn't necessarily align with what we might intuit it does.

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