Christmas comes early

I received an official notice that I am part of a class action settlement. It seems that some credit card companies were making improper charges on foreign transactions. Wow. What are the odds of credit card companies sticking it to customers?

This isn't the first time I benefited from someone else's vigilance and initiative. A couple years ago, I received a similar notice, concerning a bank that was doing some slight-of-hand with mortgage clients. Again, I'm shocked. Someone discovered it, had the initiative to take it to court and I got a new kayak out of it.

It's no small effort or expense to mount a class action suit, so my hat is off to these people. I can think of two instances when I contemplated it.

One was when I was being jerked around on a product rebate. Researching it, I discovered this was not uncommon. There are rebate companies. They approach manufacturers of products and offer to conduct rebate campaigns. The sales hook is more than a spike in product sales. The rebate company will collect vital data on the buyer in the application process, and feed the marketing intelligence back to the manufacturer. Yeah, and sell it to whom else?

The fees weren't enough for some of the greedier and seedier. Instead of collecting the rebate pool from the manufacturer and making prompt payments to the buyers, they would delay payment and invest the money, collecting dividends and interest off that. This wasn't their money to invest. It belonged to the customers. And, they were jeopardizing the goodwill between the manufacturer and their customers by delaying payment.

It was a fuzzy line. But, some of the rebate companies simply didn't pay off. Or, didn't until they received a certain amount of complaints from someone.

The other situation involved a car lease. I went with the deal that offered the lowest interest rate. This might be a red flag, but it came from a major bank. I thought it had to be legitimate. Doh! I had enough business experience that I should've known better.

The marketing of the lease had contrasted it with the aspects of buying a car. You don't have to run the gauntlet of selling when you're through with the car. Simply turn it in.

It was anything but simple. Toward the end of the lease, I received a notice that I had to make two appointments at two different locations. the first was for inspection. The second, to drop off. I'll take the weight for this since I didn't ask enough questions up front.

The inspection was to ascertain if there were any damages that exceeded the "normal wear & tear" clause. I did understand that up front and had no problem with paying for a missing mirror or whatever.

the inspector went over the car, making notations on a clipboard. He gave me my copy. The amount I owed was $1,800. Excuse me?

Among the items was a paint job because the paint on the front edge of the hood was chipped. You drive a car three years/45,000 miles and it's abnormal to get a few stone chips from road debris? I don't think so.

Then, there was a new set of tires because of excess wear. Bovine excrement! The manufacturer didn't guarantee them for even close to this mileage. I had already bought these tires in the price of the lease. I wasn't buying a set for the next owner.

The remaining items were equally ludicrous. I did some nosing around and found that this bank had gone to leasing companies all over town. They tried to get their business by promising to increase their profits through increased back end charges. I did some additional research and found this to be prevalent across the country.

I called the bank and asked for an appointment to discuss the issue on my lease and a reasonable resolution. The department manager (who sounded about 13 years old) informed me they didn't tolerate or negotiate with deadbeats. Either pay within 48 hours or they'd sue.

I ascertained who the department reported to and called that vice president. I related my conversation with his department head. He said that while he didn't think the tone had been appropriate, he stood behind the policies of the bank.

I told him not to wait 48 hours. Sue me now and I'll subpoena all their lease records for the past three years. Charges for "normal" wear & tear should be occurring in much less than 50% of the contracts or something abnormal is going on. If I found that to be the case, there were federal statutes dealt with this much better than a small claims court. He said I owed them nothing.

Why didn't I go class action? In both cases, I found that these illicit practices were not only widespread, but widely known. The state attorney general offices of a number of states had already filed some suits in behalf of their constituents (not my state, of course).

So, my reasoning was that if there were grounds for class action, it would've been done already. Might've been mistaken.