friendly fraud

English

Noun

friendly fraud (uncountable)

1. A type of fraud in which a customer purchases and receives an item using a credit card, then requests a spurious chargeback to obtain a refund, effectively gaining the item for free.
   • 2003 May 13, Jennifer Bayot, “Company Sues MasterCard Over Fees for Online Sales”, in The New York Times‎^[1], archived from the original on 2022-03-19:

     David Robertson, publisher of The Nilson Report, said Internet companies were plagued by "friendly fraud," in which "your perfectly valid cardholder can deny a transaction he willingly made."

   • 2014 December 10, Ines Novacic, “This fraud may be "friendly," but costs are high”, in CBS News‎^[2], archived from the original on 2022-08-17:

     The steps for investigating a chargeback are tedious and labor-intensive, so most merchants don't bother with them, especially for lower-cost items. This makes friendly fraud easier to pull off, even if some consumers are unaware that they're doing anything wrong.

   • 2019 January 25, Alex Hern, “Facebook let children run up huge bills, court papers show”, in The Guardian‎^[3], archived from the original on 2022-08-10:

     Internally, the company described the problem as one of "friendly fraud", and one staff member, who was in charge of a project to increase the company's game revenues, said it was particularly bad with a few games, including "PetVille, Happy Aquarium, Wild Ones, Barn Buddy and any Ninja game".