Legal definition of fraud?

A little backstory.

I placed an order via PayPal on April 6th of this year, and the money went through on the same day. For the record, I’m a minor (and have heard that this entitles me to withdraw from any transaction at any time, but I haven’t seen it cited anywhere). As of today, the order has not arrived and I have not had any indication that it will arrive anytime soon.

I was told to allow “four to eight weeks” for delivery. As of tomorrow it will have been three months.

This guy (it’s a one-man business) has made zero attempt to contact me. I have managed to contact him twice (once to change the shipping address when it became apparent that he didn’t intend to deliver before I left school for the summer, once via a phone number I had to look up on his domain registration information, as it wasn’t posted on the web site :rolleyes: ). When I called, he assured me that the order would be shipped priority mail some time in the next week. Since then, it’s been two weeks. Methinks it ain’t getting here. He’s whined about a sudden rush of orders and being a one-man business, so tough, poor baby, but I don’t really care. He was under contract to deliver a full month ago, and as far as I’m concerned, it was HIS job to contact ME when there was a delay, not the other way around. (I’ve given him two phone numbers, both of which have voice mail, three e-mail addresses, three IM screen names, and a street address. He still doesn’t bother to get ahold of me. Ever.)

So. Legally, what can I do about this? At what point does this become out-and-out fraud? I’m still hoping that somehow this will go through, since it’s the perfect birthday gift for a good friend (the only reason I’ve waited this long), but I can’t afford to have $110 vanish into thin air. (And no, I can’t just order from someone else – he has the rights to this particular movie replica, although a Japanese company will be manufacturing a $500 version soon, yeowch.)

Frustrated and rantish, but hopefully one of you fine folks can help me plan a course of action.

Not sure if this will help, but you might like to try checking out consumer complaint avenues, like econsumer for info and advice.

IANAL etc. A good basic definition of fraud is “the intentional misrepresentation or concealment of information in order to deceive or mislead.” Were you going to sue this guy (although as a minor that’s problematic) your better case is probably for breach of contract. Of course the very easiest thing for you to do is to reclaim your money through PayPal. It is true that as a minor you generally speaking lack the legal capacity to enter into contracts (YMMV by jurisdiction) so that’s another out for you.

Otto is right about the legality of a minor entering a contract. However, in the eyes of the credit card company (you had to use a credit card/debit card for PayPal, correct?), since you gave them the payment information (account number and expiration date), techinally it is not fraud.

I’d reccomend going through PayPal first and seeing if you can dispute the charge. If that doesn’t work, dispute the charge with the account that you have signed up with PayPal.

To clarify, it’s a debit card involved somehow with Visa, so that it behaves like a credit card in online transactions and such; AFAIK, minors aren’t allowed credit cards proper, period. I can’t so much piggyback on my parents’ credit cards until I’m 18.

I’ve spent some more time going through PayPal’s policies, and it looks like I can’t dispute the charge through them – it’s been well over 30 days since the transaction, so PayPal has already washed its hands of the whole thing. Looks like it’s up to the bank. I don’t intend to sue unless it’s absolutely necessary (which I doubt); mostly I’m looking for ammunition to discourage this guy from flat-out lying to me again.

Thanks, folks.