The great credit card swindle (part one)
As you’ve probably read, the ASB breached the Fair Trading Act 1986 by not adequately disclosing currency conversion fees on overseas credit and debit card transactions before March 2005. If you’re an ASB customer, this would affect everything you bought on overseas trips or from offshore websites during that period. Dig out a credit card statement and look for “offshore service margins”. I emailed ASB yesterday, asking for clarification about how its compensation would be paid. Warren Knott of the ASB E-team replied (worryingly) that he personally would have $0.41 cents refunded to his card. This morning, I checked my account online and found $30.37 had been credited. A letter later arrived but provided the above amount only as “total compensation”:
Making sure you get your share: the cost of an email to your personal banker. A line-by-line breakdown of “offshore service margins” without having to hunt for five-year-old Visa statements: priceless.
Update: On 21 June I rang the ASB call centre again. They have now promised to send me a letter with a breakdown of each overseas transaction in the period and the service margins that apply to each. I’ll keep you posted.
“Each cardholder who made foreign currency transactions between 1 March 2002 and 31 March 2005 is entitled to receive a pro rata portion of this compensation based on the amount of fees paid by them on these transactions.”I’d say we’re entitled to a bit more than that. Since ASB’s “offshore service margins” average $1 per transaction, how has this proportional payment been allocated? Have you kept your 2002 credit card statements? You can’t get statements older than 13 months off ASB’s website. So, it owes each of its customers details about the affected transactions in this period, not a letter with an apologetic ‘lump sum’ amount. Worse still, the ASB website says, if you haven’t received a letter by 29 June, it’s your obligation to lodge a claim before 19 October or you won’t get any compensation. Anything unclaimed after that time will be paid to a consumer-related charity nominated by the Commerce Commission.
Making sure you get your share: the cost of an email to your personal banker. A line-by-line breakdown of “offshore service margins” without having to hunt for five-year-old Visa statements: priceless.
Update: On 21 June I rang the ASB call centre again. They have now promised to send me a letter with a breakdown of each overseas transaction in the period and the service margins that apply to each. I’ll keep you posted.
posted by Chris Bell at 3:48 PM
5 Comments:
0.43??? Mine came to $35.50. Haven't received a letter yet though.
Mr "Gordon" Knott of the ASB got .41 cents. As I say, I got $30.37 - similar to your amount, anonymous. Are they just choosing random numbers around the $30 mark? ASB promised me a callback yesterday and reneged on that, too.
I was credited with $11.05 with, as you say, no explanation of how this number was arrived at...
Hi Sally, I suggest that you and any other ASB customers ring the call centre number (0800-486 787) and demand a statement with a transaction breakdown. When I get mine, I'm definitely going to compare their information with my filed Visa statements. I doubt I have every 2002 statement, but I will expect the offshore service margins to tally exactly in those I have. In an age of advanced IT in banking, I find it hard to believe that it wasn't possible (not to mention ethically prudent) to include this information in the bank's initial correspondence with us. I mean, this is an organisation that broke the law because it didn't adequately disclose information and apparently here it is doing the very same again.
No surprise that credit card companies are a pack of usurious bastards.
A little known fact is that the credit card industry is number one in the entire United States with annual earnings in the $US30 billion range. That is, they earn more than the combined profits of McDonalds Microsoft and Walmart.
And until your ‘wannit now’ consumer wakes up to the obscene rates of interest charged to their cards, they will continue to do so.
If you want to really piss them off – just pay the frigging bill on time; don’t accrue interest. They refer to us very few as ‘deadbeats’. I am one. I get free credit for a month, plus I get hotpoints which I can convert to air points or buy other stuff.
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