Five months ago, almost to the day, I wrote here about a postcard that I received alerting the Reids about our share in a huge civil lawsuit.
Bank of America had reached a $410 million class-action settlement with plaintiffs in regard to a crafty way of creating additional overdraft fees. The suit resulted from BOA posting debit-card transactions from highest to lowest dollar amount. It didn’t matter the order, the bank arranged them in the particular order that it wanted to multiply overdrafts.
You too were eligible if you held a Bank of America consumer checking and/or savings account that you could have accessed with a debit card between Jan. 1, 2001 and May 24, 2011. You also qualified if you were charged at least one overdraft fee as a result of Bank of America's aforementioned practice. If you had asked me—and no one did—I thought BOA was out of line.
I followed the case online as it reached its November 7 court date, where a judge officially accepted the settlement.
I expected to receive nothing. I figured there would be attorneys’ fees, a legal challenge, or a Supreme Court ruling that would see to it that BOA would never send me a check. When I dared to think I would receive compensation, the largest amount I could imagine was $7.
As Christmas neared, on Friday, December 23, I checked my mail shortly before noon. A letter and check were enclosed in an envelope with a Minneapolis return address and the words “Court Administrator." The check was worth much more than $7—it was just more than $98. Just in time for Christmas, Bank of America had sent us a nice card: the kind with money in it.
BOA announced earlier this year that it was going to charge a $5 monthly fee for use of its debit cards. I was checking out other banks when BOA came to its senses and dropped that plan. In essence, the bank said, “Our bad.”
I thank BOA for that—and for a nice Christmas gift.
Commentary by Alvin Reid
