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December 10, 2007
Get hundreds of dollars back from Visa and Mastercard
For once I’m happy to see a lawsuit get a big settlement, $313M.
I remember sitting in the Bruxelles office on a lonely Friday night in 2004, tediously doing my expenses from a month of trips to Paris, when I realized that Citibank was converting my euro-based purchases at 0.8 euro to the dollar. At the time, the prevailing quoted exchange rate was 0.83, and the euro had never been as bad as 0.8. (Oh for the good old days of an only slightly-weak dollar!)
I called Citibank, who swore up and down that the exchange rate used was the prevailing interbank rate and that they added no markup. I later learned that Citibank was adding 2% and Visa was adding 1%, which was not disclosed. The customer service rep, her manager, and some other expert I talked to were either stupid or liars. I’ll give Citibank the benefit of the doubt. This is the bank that’s so uncoordinated that Citi Mortgage demanded I go to a Citibank and pay them $65 for cancelled checks that I then had to send to Citi Mortgage.
Anyway, the upshot of all this is that you can get all these fees, from 1996 to 2006, refunded. I figure that between visits to 66 countries over the course of almost 300 days abroad, I probably spent $30,000 on credit and ATM cards. With a 3% fee, that’s $900 I’m owed. Add it up for yourself and it might come to a nice chunk of change.
Visit www.ccfsettlement.com to file your claim.
Posted by adrianjo at December 10, 2007 12:04 AM