AutoZone Class Action Claims Reward Credits Expire Without Notice

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A California couple are accusing AutoZone of changing the policy of its rewards program without notifying customers, causing many customers to lose their earned credits.

Plaintiffs Mary Ruth Hughes and Kevin Shenkman claim AutoZone made changes to a customer incentive program in a way that induced customers to keep making purchases under the impression they were earning credits toward an award, when in fact those credits were set to expire without the customers’ knowledge.

The plaintiffs say the car parts retailer’s actions caused harm to them and to an entire proposed plaintiff Class.

Under the AutoZone rewards program, customers received one reward credit for each purchase they made over $20.

Once they accrued five such credits, they were allegedly entitled to a $20 cash-equivalent reward, good towards a future AutoZone purchase.

Plaintiffs say that after running this rewards program for a while, AutoZone unilaterally changed it to make credits expire after 12 months and any cash-equivalent rewards expire after three months.

According to the AutoZone class action lawsuit, the company neglected to adequately notify customers about the change.

As a result, the plaintiffs say, they and the proposed Class Members continued to make AutoZone purchases under the impression they were building credits toward a reward, when in fact some of those credits would expire without their knowledge before they had a chance to redeem them.

Even if customers had been adequately notified, the plaintiffs claim that the new expiration provisions still cause many customers’ credits to expire without being redeemed.

Because vehicles don’t typically need maintenance on at least five separate occasions within a twelve-month period, they allege customers are not likely to make the five purchases per year required to redeem their credits before they expire.

Hughes and Shenkman say once they enrolled in the AutoZone rewards program, they intentionally made AutoZone purchases over $20 each so they could earn credits towards a $20 reward. They earned that reward several times over the course of a few years, they say.

But in March 2016, they learned that AutoZone had expired some of their previously earned credits. They later found out the company had changed its policy sometime in 2014 or 2015 to allow those credits to expire.

They say AutoZone never gave them notice of the change.

In this AutoZone class action lawsuit, the couple seeks to represent a proposed plaintiff Class consisting of all persons enrolled in the AutoZone rewards program and who made AutoZone purchases in California for which the reward credit expired within the last four years, or for whom their $20 reward was deemed to expire within three months.

They seek an award of compensatory, general and punitive damages, with interest.

They are also asking for a court order requiring AutoZone to restore all expired rewards credits for purchases made within California and forbidding the company from expiring such credits in the future.

Hughes and Shenkman are represented by attorneys Ryan M. Lapine and Todd W. Bonder of Rosenfeld Meyer & Susman LLP, and by Seth Yohalem of Waskowski Johnson Yohalem LLP.

The AutoZone Rewards Progam Class Action Lawsuit is Mary Ruth Hughes, et al. v. AutoZone Parts Inc., et al., Case No. BC631080, in the Superior Court for the State of California, County of Los Angeles.

UPDATE: December 2019, the California AutoZone reward credits class action settlement is now open. Click here to learn more.