Can someone legally require you to pay them back after passing on a discount?

Question

Can someone who willingly let us use a “friends and family” discount at their place of work ask for it back in the form of money?

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A friend regularly gets coupons from her employer. These coupons grant a discount when buying any product her company sells , and they get renewed every year in her account. She is allowed to pass these on to friends and family.

She encourages all of us to use her coupons since, in her words, it goes to a “waste”. So we took her offer.

However, there has since been a falling out amongst friends, and now spitefully she wants us to pay her back all the money we saved from the coupons. Her logic is: “You would have paid full price if not for me and now you owe me.”

She says she will have to legally deal with me if she is not paid ASAP. Also, there is text proof of her happily offering this help without any conditions, when we all originally accepted the coupons from her and when we were all on better terms as friends.

Answer 1

You can always make a request: presumably the real question is whether a person can sue you in court and have the courts force you to pay her. As you describe it, the person gave you a gift – the equivalent of a coupon with monetary value. A gift is an unconditional transfer of title, where she originally owned the coupon, but she gives it to you, now you own it. When you use it at the store to buy something else, that is between you and the store. We assume the store simply accepted the coupon unconditionally, so that is the end of the transaction. It is possible that she was not actually entitled to give you the coupon, per the contractual agreement that she had with the store, and they may be threatening to punish her in some way. The courts will not force a third party to rectify the consequence of a person's contractual errors, they will limit your liability to contracts that you had with the person (there are none) or with the store (you have no dispute with the store, or vice versa).

Answer 2

I would advise the friend that if she asks you and receives the money saved, then it isn’t a “friends and family” discount anymore, but it’s her taking money from her employer.

You could also take the goods back to the store and ask for a refund. Say you bought an item on sale for $100 because a “friends and family” discount reduced it to $80, while another store sold the same item for $90. If you had known you had to pay the extra $20 then you wouldn’t have bought it at this store at all. Your ex-friend’s employer will be very interested in hearing that.

Answer 3

Dictionary.com defines a favor (in this sense) as "something done or granted out of goodwill, rather than from justice or for remuneration[.]"

The concept of a favor, inherently, is a legally non-binding benefit conferred on someone without receiving an immediately contemporaneous benefit in exchange. It need not be strictly gratuitous, as it may be made with an expectation that favors will be returned, as a matter of honor, rather than legal obligation, in the future. But, a favor isn't intended to create a legally binding obligation.

In contrast, a right to sue for "unjust enrichment" arises when someone benefits another, at their own expense, under circumstances when it would be unjust not to compensate that person for the benefit conferred.

For example, the benefit can be unjust not to provide compensation for because the benefit was conferred accidentally, or was conferred with an expectation of reimbursement or compensation, even if the exact compensation or reimbursement to be provided was not expressly agreed to by the parties.

In this case, there was no communication or context that would suggest that there was an expectation of reimbursement for the benefit received, and it was not a benefit provided at the expense of the person providing it. Instead, the employer or the person who provided the discounted goods or services provided the benefit.

The fact that the parties understood it to be a favor likewise supports the conclusion that this was not legally binding and was effectively gratuitous, rather that being done under circumstances where it would be unjust to not compensate the person who did the favor.

Obviously, anyone can ask that a favor be repaid. But a favor does not provide a valid basis for bringing a lawsuit to have the favor repaid.

Answer 4

The problem is your friend's, not yours. There's a reasonable likelihood that the policy at her employer forbids what she is doing. I had a friend who worked at a large retailer. In one year, her parents, her sister and a friend all bought refrigerators using her "friends and family" discount. The employer thought it was fishy and fired her.

I used to work for a large company with a "company store". We could buy "reasonable" quantities of items at a very large discount for "friends and family". We could not resell what we bought (but it was understood that our friends and family could purchase through us (i.e., buying through us, paying us the purchase price)). There were many stories in the company (several on official internal web sites) about people who lost their jobs (and in very rare cases, were arrested) for abusing the company store.

I'd be surprised if your friend's employer allowed her to sell "friends and family" merchandise to friends and family at a profit. That is effectively what she is proposing: "hey, this lists at $100, but with the discount it's only $80, why don't you pay me the list prices and I can pocket the discount?"

But, the problem is her company's policies, not anything to do with the law (but, I'm not a lawyer)

Answer 5

If the employee wants this payment, they should make it clear when they're transfering the coupon to their friend. In other words, they should sell the coupon, not give it away and then ask for repayment later.

While this is not the intent of the employer in allowing these transfers, it's probably not illegal. On the other hand, it's not a good way to keep friends, but that's not a legal matter.

Answer 6

Since she's a friend, have you gone further to ask what is the underlying reason why she seemed to offer these coupons for your benefit, but now wants the financial benefit returned so that you'll be in no different position than if you had paid full price with your own cash?

Have you invited her to consider that you may have made different purchasing decisions without the coupon, or invited her to wonder why on earth you would have faffed around with her coupons at the point of sale if you would not ultimately retain the discount?

Legally, and assuming you have told all pertinent facts, then there seems no grounds for the repayment demand.