Foreign Transaction Fee Refund?
 

Did anyone else get a letter recently about a court settlement refunding foreign transaction fees if you used your credit card in another country? I was reading a post about it in the Lounge, and I checked our mail, and we got one too. It says if we travelled for a week, we're entitled to a $25 refund.

As a matter of fact I got that letter today in the mail too. Not sure what to make of it other than what you just said. I haven't had a chance to read the fine print, but I believe the case is based on a couple of banks charging excessive fees for basic transactions and hid those fees in the curency exchange rate. Don't hold me to this, is just my first impression (I may also be getting this case mixed up with another)...I plan to ask for my $25.

I also got a letter. Is anyone planning on asking for more then the 25 dollars. I traveled alot during those years and I had one purchase alone of over 1500 dollars. No regrets but I just had to have a special table from Thailand!

there is a long thread about this in the Fodorite Lounge
http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=35093085

I guess its not for us Canadians.. :(

My boyfriend got the refund paperwork (MasterCard) but I did not. I used Visa. Maybe not all the paperwork has been mailed out yet.

Oh goody! I do a lot of foreign transactions lately :D

The refund will only cover the time period from February 1996 to November 2006.

If you traveled more than 7days overseas during that time period you can get a refund of much more than $25.

It's really easy to apply for the refund online, so you don't have to even mail back the paperwork. A few clicks, and you'll have $25 coming to you.

They say to use the "easy form" if you think you charged less than $2,500 on your credit cards while out of the country in that time period. That's the form I filled out (online). You just put in the ID number that's printed on the letter they sent you.

I chose Option 2 where you get a 1% refund based on their calculations. We were out of the country 161 days during that time period between 1996 and 2006.

We would have liked to have used Option 3 (3% refund) where you actually list the credit card numbers you used, but we've changed cards a few times, so that wasn't possible for us to do. If I'd kept all of our credit card statements, I'd have that info, but I didn't.

It will be interesting to see what happens.

We got the letter too, and were out of the country for more than 7 days during that period, so it seems that option 2 is the one to choose. Sounds good to me!