Refund of credit card foreign transaction fee?
 

I guess this isn't really a travel question, but it pertains to most everyone here who uses a credit card when traveling so I thought I'd post here.
I received a packet in the mail today from the U.S. District Court saying I was eligible for a refund of foreign transaction fees incurred on my Mastercard between Feb. 1996 and Nov. 2006. Has anyone else received this?
Please excuse this post if this has already been discussed.
I'm just wondering which option to choose (there are three to choose from) and how to go about getting the information they ask for.
Thanks

I got that in the mail today too...I would like to know also if anyone has gotten this notification?

I got this too. I'm wondering if it's worth figuring out (and documenting) how much I've spent in the last 10 years. 2-4 international trips a year and lots o' shopping has to add up to something. Or just go for the $25. It's free money.

I just got it, too, and tried to do some on-line searching to see if this is legitimate. All I found were the same website given in the letter. The first two forms don't ask for credit card information, so that's good. I'd be grateful to hear any more information about this. Seems too good to be true!

Count me as another who got this packet today.

I'll be monitoring this thread to see what other fodorites intend to do!

We got this letter today also. We have been out of the USA a total of 38 days. My husband filled out the form online and just had to put in the number of days and whether it was leisure, business, etc. I guess we will see what we get.

I just received a document in the mail from the US District Court Settlement Administrator, with attached refund forms. There are three options for receiving a refund:

1) Request an EASY REFUND of $25.00 (recommended if you travelled outside the US for less than one week during the period of 1996 to 2006).

2) Request a TOTAL ESTIMATION REFUND (recommended if you travelled more than one week and had more than $2500 in foreign transactions).

3) Request an ANNUAL ESTIMATED refund (recommended if you had extensive foreign travel & transactions and are willing to provide year-by-year information). Refunds will be a maximum of 1% to 3%.

Deadline for applying is May 30, 2008.

Somehow I missed the mailing in the spring, so I'm glad the court followed up with an official mailing. Luckily I still have all my credit card bills from 10 years ago, so I'm going for Option 3.

Robyn :)>-

I have not seen this specific mailing, in general I object to these kind of settlements and choose to abstain on principle.

These include shareholder lawsuits about stock price going down, things like that.

My objection is the $$ lawyer fees. I'm suspicious that lawyers initiate these actions in the name of the public good when they know well and good no one individual complainant will get more than pocket change and they'll get a silver pocket lining for themselves.

J62 -

The lawyers will request 27.5% of the estimated $313,000,000 in the settlement. They will also request reimbursement of their expenses, not to exceed $5,000,000. Total comes to over $86,000,00!

Robyn :)>-

ok, so maybe silver isn't the right metal for the lining. Platinum perhaps?

So if I spent $10,000 over to years, a 1% refund amounts to $100. Fortunately I keep line-by-line spreadsheet of all my charges so this would be easy to calculate.

I have in my hand a (winning?) lottery ticket for Tue 12/4 Mega-millions. Winning jackpot is just $82,000,000. Still falls short of the lawyer's take, even before taxes.

See my post in the lounge for more info.

J62: Man, that's a hard to choice to pick who's worse -- lawyers or CC companies.

I'm calling it a draw and putting in for my money.

I also received the mailing - probably because I've had an account with one of the memtioned companies for several years and have used it overseas.

Sure the lawyers are going to get their money but I may as well take advantage of the opportunity to get a little too.

I think that I can locate the records. If so, I'm going for the detailed claim. IF, repeat, IF we can get the 3%, it will be worth the trouble.

I also received the court notice. It appears legitimate, but then the good fakes always do. I will try to verify this, but looks like the easy way is to take the $25.00 and be glad to get anything. Too bad for us in the US we couldn't get 25 Euros!

J62: No offense, but the lawyers are going to get their money either way regardless of your principles. You might as well get your share no matter how small it is.

Add me to the list of people receiving this mailing and questioning the validity.

Validity of what?

Here's some info:

http://tinyurl.com/ywldub

Imagine if you unilaterally decided to violate the contract you have with your credit card (CC) company, and withheld 1% of the payments you made to. say, restaurants. I think you would agree your CC would have every right to seek that money back.

The situation is, however, reversed. The CC companies, as determined by the court, conspired together to unilaterally add a charge of 1% of the money you spent overseas, and then violated the contract by not informing you of that charge. Some people would say, to the same extent that the CC companies have a right to get back the money you withheld from them, YOU have the right to get back the money they took from you.

How much, according to the court, was stolen from CC users? About $336 million. Some people would say the theft of $336 million is nothing to worry about. Others would say that a theft of such a magnitude should result in some punishment to the thieves. The court said that the only punishment would be to return the stolen money. This mail-out is simply to ensure that all the victims of this robbery are aware that they can get their money back.

Back in February, I submitted my claim for all foreign CC transactions (being anal-retentive DOES help, on occasion), and, like the rest of you here, have been informed of this settlement. Since the alternatives to this lawsuit would have been (1) allowing the CC companies to steal $336 million with no consequences to them or (2) my taking on these companies by myself; I'm glad this lawsuit has allowed justice to (partially) prevail.

I recognize some people think that corporations stealing $336 million is less morally objectional than lawyers getting $82 million for stopping the theft, but understand why others may disagree.

Lots of very good discussion with many different perspectives.

I've run the #'s (yes, being anal retentive does certainly help)

~$25,000 in foreign cc expenditures over the last 10yrs. At 1% that = $250. Unfortunately (for my bank account), all but ~10% was company reimbursed expenses, which means I do not have a personal entitlement to the $225, which leaves me with the magic $25 sum.

We got 2 packets - I guess because we have used two different credit cards on 8 trips to Europe between 1996 and 2006.

I simply can't be bothered to reconstruct what we spent (I am not anal retentive) but wonder if I respond to both mailings if we will end up with $50.

Worth a try, I guess. It will pay for one day's breakfast in Paris on our upcoming trip!

My husband and I both received this mailing yesterday. I do have records for at least 4 trips whereas he has none. I'll have to look at more closely to see if the extra effort is worth it.

Yes, I got the packet too, and yes I will be going for the 25 dollar refund, too much work to figure out all the other

Well thanks for all the feedback. I've already requested statements from my CC bank, so if/when I get them adding up the foreign transactions won't be too much trouble if I can recoup several hundred dollars.

We also received the notice and filed it in the round file, until I noticed this topic.

The problem is that the banks, including Bank of America, are still charging excessive ATM and foreign exchange fees.

I received the mailing yesterday, I was going to check at it online, but glad that you all received it. It is too much a hassel for me to calculate the expenses over the past 10 year, I may just do the $25. What if I threw the mail in a trash can?

A massive mailing from "IRS" earlier this year, however, was a scam.

I too received this yesterday. Unfortunately we shredded all of our 2006 and prior CC statements this past summer... we definitely probably spent $20,000 or more overseas during that time period but don't have definitive proof.

Does anyone know if most CC companies charge a fee to send you all your old statements?

Also, we were using cards that only charged the 1% fee (not the 2-3% mark-up charged by MBNA, Bank or America, Chase, etc). Does this settlement cover both fees, just the 1%, just the 2-3% mark-up, ???

I got all the ones I needed from Citibank for free.

Why didn't I get one of those packets? I have PAYED THOUSANDS in foreign transaction fees in that time period.

The Great and Powerful Thingorjus

Thanks NeoPatrick. I was hoping you would see my questions because you always have precise answers :-)

I believe most of our fees were probably on MBNA cards, now owned by Bank of America. I guess I get to call them too and request statements.

It's a good thing I have until May to send everything in - this is going to take some time!

I use capital one when travelling. . no fees and best conversion rate for the day for transactions.

AMEX corporate also does no fees.

Yeah, I got one too. Looks legit- it doesn't ask for any personal info at all for the first two options. It's interesting that on the CC statement I got after returning from Ireland this year the "foreign transaction fee" is now itemized for each transaction. I never noticed that before.

It became law in April 2006 that the foreign trans fees had to be displayed separately on the statements, and detailed in the disclosures.

According to the on-line form, your bank is required to send you all of the CC information you request, but first you have to list the credit card and the last 4 digits of your SS number associated with each credit card. Before I do that, I want to double check to see if everything is legitimate, even though it is worth a little more than a Starbuck's for last year alone.

I had not heard about this refund. We have taken many trips during this time period and use credit cards almost exclusively to pay for expenditures in Europe. Do you have to receive the information from the specific credit card issuer to qualify or is there a general site from which one can request reimbursement? Thanks for the information.

Take care,
Robyn France

You don't have to add up all your charges if you take Option #2. We added up all the days we'd been out of the country during the eligible dates, and my husband had 69 and I had 59, so that should get us quite a bit more than $25.

Option 3 is the only one that requires you to add up all your spending. Option 2 will give you the "typical" amount for the days you were out of the country.

We received our (three) letter yesterday from the U.S. District Court for three separate credit cards, but haven't had a chance to thoroughly read the contents (just skimmed through).

This suit and the verdict was covered by the press--there is nothing fraudulent about the mailing. The cc companies were charging a foreign transaction fee and not notifying patrons of it (all of this was well-explained in the posting by Paul Rabe). One's personal bias about whether lawyers should or shouldn't get a contingency based fee seems a completely separate issue. As a result of their efforts, however, all cc companies do now post the amount of the foreign transaction fee charged--and as pointed out by Paul Rabe, the cc companies were deceiving their customers to a mighty hefty tune.

If one has kept one's cc bills from each year, doing the third option only requires
going through them and taking the charges done overseas. Not particularly time-consuming or taxing unless one was travelling abroad every month or so. We did about two trips or one long trip just about every one of those ten years--tallying up the charges has taken about 20-30 minutes. No big deal.

I haven't heard anything about a lawsuit for us Visa customers so am jealous!

Yes, it is an obscenely huge fee that the law firms collect in a class action suit (when they win). But without the law suits would corporations contact us and say? "Oh, by the way, we cheated you for years and now that we have developed a corporate conscience we want to give you a small refund."
That will happen about the same time that the "Enrons" tell us that they manipulated the market to create an artificial energy shortage while the federal governement eliminated some price controls. We are getting a huge refund, right?
Until being exposed a few years ago the IRS did not advise taxpayers when they overpaid. You would only get a notice when you underpaid. This was not a class action lawsuit but exposure and pressure in a different form.

If we submitted our claim already (I did it this summer) do you have to resubmit? Anyone know? I haven't seen the new paperwork.

I got it too.
let's see, how shall I spend my $25.00 big ones?