NBT Bank will resolve claims brought about by its customers of charging unfair nonsufficient funds (NSF) fees with a $4.25 million settlement. The settlement will benefit both current and former NBT Bank customers who were charged NSF fees between 4th December 2013 and 30th November 2021.
Settlement Website: LoweOverDraftSettlement.com
Objection Deadline: 08/30/2022
Exclusion Deadline: 08/30/2022
Claim Form: Class members don’t need to submit any claim form to benefit from this settlement. They will receive the settlement payment or unpaid fee forgiveness automatically if they do not exclude themselves.
Deadline For Submitting Claim Form: Not applicable
Final Hearing Date: 09/29/2022
Settlement Amount: $4.25 million
Potential Claim Amount: Variable
Proof Of Purchase: Not applicable
NBT Bank was ranked among the best banks in the world by Forbes in 2022. It offers services like different types of loans and personal and business accounts. A class-action lawsuit has been filed against NBT Bank accusing them of charging unfair NSF fees by following deceptive business practices.
Plaintiffs in this class action lawsuit have challenged the “APPSN” and “retry” fees of banks. The APPSN or Authorize Positive, Purportedly Settle Negative fees are charged when NBT authorizes customer accounts for undertaking transactions on having sufficient balance but later on declines these transactions due to insufficient balance. The plaintiffs added that NBT Bank charges unfair NSF fees while denying APPSN transactions.
Customers are charged retry fees when the transactions are resubmitted to NBT bank after being denied due to insufficient funds. The bank fee class action lawsuit has pointed out that these transactions led to multiple levies of NSF fees for the same transaction that can pile up quickly.
According to the NBT Bank class-action lawsuit, these fees are unfair and breach the bank’s account agreements. Claims have also been made by plaintiffs under consumer protection laws as a part of this settlement. NBT Bank doesn’t deny that it charged the NSF fees but contends it did so properly and according to the applicable law and agreement terms. Despite this, the bank has agreed to resolve these allegations with a $4.25 million settlement fund.
As per the settlement terms, class members are eligible to receive a payment depending on the type and number of fees charged. 69% of the net settlement fund will be directed towards funding payments for APPSN fees whereas the remaining 31% will be used to refund retry NSF fees. The exact payment made to class members will represent their proportional share of the settlement fund based on each member’s share of the total amount of fees charged.
Currently, the settlement payment will be made to customers as an account credit while the former ones will receive the payment as a cheque. Other than funding the settlement, NBT Bank will forgive uncollected fees of nearly $1.5 million that were assessed by the bank by being charged off on account closure.