Envision Credit Union Facing Class Action Over Alleged Illegal Overdraft Fees

New to ClassAction.org? Read our Newswire Disclaimer

Envision Credit Union is the defendant in a proposed class action lawsuit filed in Florida over alleged unlawful overdraft (OD) fees the case says the company assessed to customers who had not overdrawn their accounts. From the complaint:

“In plain, clear, and simple language, the checking account contract documents discussing OD Fees promise that the Defendant will only charge OD Fees on transactions with insufficient funds to ‘cover’ a given transaction.

As happened to [the plaintiff], however, Defendant charges OD Fees even when the transactions have not overdrawn an account. [The plaintiff] was repeatedly charged OD Fees on transactions, even though, according to the monthly account statements prepared by [the defendant], [the plaintiff’s] account balance was never negative for the supposed overdraft event. By definition, there were always funds to cover those transactions—yet [the defendant] assessed an OD Fee on them anyway.”

The crux of the lawsuit rests on the contracts between the defendant and its customers. While Envision’s standard account agreement allows the company to charge a $29.50 fee for debit card transactions that result in an overdraft, the case argues the defendant’s posting of when non-recurring transactions hit a customer’s account are explicitly “designed to maximize” the number of overdraft fees assessed to customers.

“In sum, there is a yawning gap between [the defendant’s] practices as described in the account documents and [the defendant’s] practices in reality,” the case claims.