Omaha Steaks Class Action Challenges Excessive Shipping Costs

Top Class Actions’s website and social media posts use affiliate links. If you make a purchase using such links, we may receive a commission, but it will not result in any additional charges to you. Please review our Affiliate Link Disclosure for more information.

Omaha Steaks International Inc. was hit with a proposed class action lawsuit that states that the company’s shipping and handling charges are unwarranted and unnecessary in contrast to the actual fees of shipping goods.

Plaintiff Neiman McCoy, a Los Angeles native, claims the charges are in violations of California’s Unfair Competition Law and of California’s Consumer Legal Remedies Act.

He states that a sensible customer would suppose that shipping and handling fees are equitably “related to a company’s actual costs of shipping and delivery.” However, the plaintiff claims, the costs of shipping and handling “greatly exceeded those costs.”

According to the lawsuit, McCoy purchased a jar of Tangy Buffalo Rub from the defendant’s website in February. When he bought the jar, however, he was charged $15.99 for shipping and handling, a price that greatly exceeds shipping and handling costs, according to the Omaha Steaks class action lawsuit.

According to a price calculator, McCoy alleges that he should have been charged half that amount if shipping and handling had gone through the U.S. postal service.

The Omaha Steaks class action point to the Direct Marketing Association, or DMA, an organization that seeks to “advance and protect responsible data-driven marketing,” which establishes a set of ethical principles or guidelines for marketing activities much like what was allegedly practiced by Omaha Steaks. These “ethical guidelines ‘are intended to provide individuals and organizations involved in direct marketing in all media with generally accepted principles of conduct.’”

The lawsuit states that DMA’s ethical guidelines on shipping charges deems that the “defendant’s delivery charges for products violate the ethical principles… because they are not reasonably related to defendant’s costs; to the contrary, they include profit and make shipping and handling a profit center.”

The ethical principles also allegedly state that shipping and handling charges should be unveiled and disclosed ahead of the order. The DMA says that “when ordering online, shoppers should receive shipping information early in the order path.”

The lawsuit contends that the proposed Class totals “at least tens of thousands,” and that the Class is “geographically dispersed across California.”

The plaintiff seeks compensatory damages on behalf of himself and all those similarly situated.

He seeks a full reimbursement of the cost of shipping and delivery fees and what he had paid “in excess of defendant’s actual costs of shipping and delivery.”

Neiman McCoy is represented by Scott J. Ferrell of Pacific Trial Attorneys APC and Ford & Diulio PC.

The Omaha Steaks Shipping Fees Class Action Lawsuit is Neiman McCoy v. Omaha Steaks International Inc.., Case No. BC658076, in the Superior Court of the State of California, for the County of Los Angeles.