In 2008, Anna Trachtenberg, a 53-year-old unemployed Pennsylvania homemaker, enrolled in a payment protection service for her credit card from Citigroup Inc. The plan promised to make the minimum monthly payment on her credit card balance for one year if she experienced certain “life changing” events, such as a disability, loss of income, or marriage.
Trachtenberg didn’t learn until two years later, when she canceled her plan, that she would not have gotten a dime had she had ever tried to collect on the benefit she thought she was promised. That’s because Trachtenberg was unemployed when she signed up — one of a handful of disqualifying factors, which Citigroup should have made clear at the outset, a class action lawsuit filed this week in Pennsylvania state court claims.
The lawsuit alleges that Citigroup failed to clearly describe the terms of its payment protection service in its marketing pitches and failed to inform thousands of customers that they didn’t qualify for benefits, a violation of Pennsylvania’s consumer protection law. The program “is so confusing as to when coverage is triggered, so restricted in terms of the benefits it provides to subscribers, and processing claims is made so difficult [that] the product is essentially worthless,” the complaint says.
The Citigroup class action is one of several similar lawsuits accusing big banks of misconduct in administration of their payment protection plans.
No comments:
Post a Comment