Wine Connoisseur Taught The Limits Of Credit Reimbursement

Wine snobs everywhere got a much needed smack down from the Court of Appeals for the 10^th Circuit on Friday when the Court ruled that Amex and Chase weren’t on the hook for more than a million dollars in credit card payments to purchase wine that was never delivered. I don’t know why, but I find this case extremely amusing.

Malik Hasan had purchased $689,000 using his Chase credit card and $379,000 using his Amex from Premier Cru. Cru delivered some but not most of the wine before it went bankrupt. Hasan demanded that the credit card companies refund his accounts and when they refused he sued them.

Even though you don’t deal with transactions of this size, the dispute is one that any credit card issuing credit union is familiar. Under the Fair Credit Billing Act, card holders can have disputed credit card transactions re-credited to their accounts. However, the law also limits the size of a card holder’s claim “to the amount of credit outstanding with respect to the disputed transaction at the time the card holder first notified the card issuer.”

In this case, our stiffed wine connoisseur was quite conscientious and at the time he disputed the transactions there was no outstanding credit balance on either of his cards. As a result, the court ruled that “because recovery under §1666i is limited to the amount of credit outstanding Hasen could recover nothing under the statute.”

Does this mean that the statute actually puts conscientious bill payers at a disadvantage? Arguably yes. But remember the real wrong-doer here is not the card issuer but the bankrupt wine company.

These Goodbye Tours Are Getting Out of Control

This has absolutely nothing to do with credit union land but I have to get it off my chest. I thought it was bad enough when Mariano Rivera took a year to retire from the Yankees. Now I hear that Elton John is taking three years for what he promises will be his last live tour. Now I like both Elton John and Mariano Rivera but at some point we have to put an end to these ridiculously long goodbyes. They are bordering on egomaniacal. By the way, speaking of egomaniacal, is anyone as disturbed by that bizarre Tom Brady Facebook documentary as I am? I really don’t need to know how he spends his personal time or what he has for breakfast. On that note, enjoy your day.