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Bank of America has agreed to pay $410 million to settle a collective class action lawsuit accusing the bank giant of charging customers with excessive overdraft fees.
Bank of America is just one of more than two dozen U.S., Canadian and European lenders named as defendants in the overdraft fee class action lawsuit, which was consolidated in 2009 from multiple lawsuits across the country. JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup, Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. are among the other defendants named in the case.
Bank of America customers sued the company in 2009 for routinely processing debit transactions from largest to smallest rather than in chronological order, which dropped account balances faster and allowed the bank to boost the potential for overdraft fees, the lawsuit said.
The complaint further charged Bank of America with not clearly telling customers they could decline overdraft protection, and with automatically charging the fees to debit card users rather than declining the transactions. Because of this practice, the lawsuit said, Bank of America customers often racked up hundreds of dollars in overdraft fees, even when their accounts may have only been overdrawn by a few dollars.
Bank of America isn’t the only bank accused of placing card transactions and/or ATM withdrawals in non-chronological order in order to maximize overdraft fees. Wells Fargo and Fifth Third Bank recently reached class action lawsuit settlements over this practice, and a class action lawsuit against FirstMerit Bank is currently pending.
Overdraft fees industry wide totaled nearly $23.7 billion in 2008, nearly double what they were in 2004, according to the Center for Responsible Lending. If the spike in overdraft fees is truly a conspiracy like these multiple class action lawsuits seem to think, then these banks seem to be getting their just desserts.
Updated February 10th, 2010
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18 thoughts onBofA Reaches Overdraft Fee Class Action Settlement
I’m so happy to hear of this ,Became they would hold my funds for days .Calling customer service was a joke/ or going to the branch was hopeless.. If you had more than one acct with them WHICH I HAD SEVERAL A BUSINESS, PERSONAL AND SAVINGS i incurred thousands of dollars in overdrafts fees.i tried continually transferring funds from one acct to another and had what they called overdraft protection…after this went on for so long i decided to leave boa period..also i kept all my deposit ledgers because i figured they were up to something good for them being sued perhaps i will get some of my money back
BofA Reaches Overdraft Fee Class Action Settlement
i hav e been repeatedly been charged overdraft fees and undue misc. charges for many unfounded reasons and i want my money back. How do i go about getting it.Please refer me thank you
BofA Reaches Overdraft Fee Class Action Settlement
Yea I paid over $300 in overdraft fees and I remember in the beginning when opening my account I was paying for overdraft protection, so why was I still getting overdraft fees?
BofA Reaches Overdraft Fee Class Action Settlement
People read the small print
“how to get paid” “….you do not have to do anything to get paid or account credit……yo will automatically receive ………..: ”
we shall see……
BofA Reaches Overdraft Fee Class Action Settlement
:-(rlene
BofA Reaches Overdraft Fee Class Action Settlement
>:o I can’t find out where to submit my information to. Please give me some feed back.
BofA Reaches Overdraft Fee Class Action Settlement
so where is my $78.00 for which i filled out the form for some two or three years ago? just how long does it take to get it?
BofA Reaches Overdraft Fee Class Action Settlement
I would also like to find out how to become part of this lawsuit, as they did this to us on several occasions from 2005-2009. I would notice that they’d run the larger newer debits/checks through 1st and then the smaller newer ones through later. That would cause my account to overdraw, and they’d only credit us back 1 overdraft fee per year.
BofA Reaches Overdraft Fee Class Action Settlement
i have daily print out of the re-arranging of charges and fees charged to me that should be. I have banked w/ them for 27 years and know their system, but their cusotmer service on line chat people won’t resolve anything and treat me like a child. Where can i submit this paper work and their email notice of a different bank balance than what they are showing when i log into my account.
BofA Reaches Overdraft Fee Class Action Settlement
How do I file a claim on this lawsuit?