There's a pending class action lawsuit against Visa, MasterCard and Diner's Club the setting and disclosure of markups and fees imposed on transactions made in a foreign currency or a foreign country from February 1 1996 to November 8 2006. The defendants have established a $336 million settlement pool. The
settlement website lists three options for payout, payable when the final settlement is reached:
- A flat $25 refund
- An estimate of expenses based on reported time out of the country refunded at 1%. An estimate I saw is that the break even point is about 5 weeks, based on studies showing an average daily expenditure of $80/day when traveling (higher for business).
- A more intensive listing of applicable charges, good if you have all your records.
More and more people are getting docs in the mail (I haven't yet), but you can also self report as part of the settlement. If you think it's fishy, you can file until May 30, 2008 to verify it.
My rough tally is 310 days out of the country (mainly my study abroad year) so that could be over $200 if I get the benefit of a formula. Not that I would deserve that much...
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I got the mailing. I haven't looked into it at all. Considering I also studied abroad, perhaps I should go the 1% route...
Yeah, I got two of those notices. I spent probably 3 months abroad over that decade, mainly in Russia and the UK, and almost all on business trips. That would mean the money rightfully is due my employer, so I'm opting for the $25 to cover my personal expenses.
Both JIll & I received the mailing this week. My first thought was to just go for the $25, since that is essentially no effort for a little found money. But then I realized that a) I have spent something like 2 or 3 months overseas in that time, and b) the 1% option is no more work for me, just for the adjudicators. Most of my overseas travel was for pleasure, staying with friends, which minimizes my charge usages, but we used plenty of ATMs, and one of those trips was our honeymoon, so maybe we could even get $50!
JT, I think you are being either overly or underly scrupulous. If the notice came to you, it is becaue you used your personal cards, not your employer's. If you used a corporate card, they should have gotten their own mailing, and you can keep whatever you get with a clean conscience. However, if you used your own card and were later reimbursed by your employer, one could argue that you should try to get as much as possible and pass the refund back to your employer.
However, since this is your *former* employer we are speaking of, you might also consider keeping it all as a token compensation for their declining stock price.
Overly or underly scrupulous? Those are my only choices. There's no chance *at all* that I was the perfect amount of scrupulous? Geez, that seems harsh.
so it's legit??? i've spent about 3 months abroad, so i looked at it for like half a second... glad i didn't throw it away!
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