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The Real Deal — CCF Settlement Forms by Luke I received a tidal wave of questions from readers this week after thousands of people received forms in the mail promising rebates for foreign transaction fees. Some worried that the CCF Settlement forms were part of an elaborate scam. Fueling fears were discrepancies in the forms. Some forms asked for sensitive personal information, while others didn’t. To get a grasp on the situation, I asked readers to email me forms they feared were fraudulent. I received two types of forms. Both are legitimate and officially represent the CCF Class Action Settlement. The official website is www.ccfsettlement.com. The first type of forms are the forms that people received in the mail. They come in three flavors (red, blue & green). These forms have personal information included on the forms including name, address and a “refund ID.” The cover letter looks like this (in all examples personally identifying information has been deleted): The green form people received in the mail does not ask for information such as SSN or credit card number and looks something like this:
The red form is the only form mailed to people that asks for sensitive personal information, including part of your SSN and credit card numbers for cards on which you’re filing claims:
The second type of forms available to people are downloadable from the official settlement website: ccfsettlement.com. The downloadable green form, for example, looks almost identical to the mailed form except it asks for sensitive personal information, including part of your SSN, credit card number, and issuing bank. It looks like this:
In all cases the proper mailing address is: Settlement Administrator Just because these forms are not part of an elaborate scam effort doesn’t negate the fact that many people suspected they were fradulent. Also, just because they’re legitimate doesn’t necessarily mean you should file a claim. There are several other class action lawsuits pending on issues related to this one. If you’ve received forms that look different than one of the forms above, feel free to email it to me at ccfscam@travelfinances.com. I’ll look at it and potentially post it… if it looks like a legitimate scam
21 Comments to "The Real Deal — CCF Settlement Forms"
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December 7, 2007 
Comments (21)
I was highly suspicious of these forms, so I went online to ‘file’ a claim. When I entered my refund ID and clicked on option 1 (which is what they probably bank on most people doing ’cause the human race is essentially lazy!) I was taken to a page to verify my info. Problem is, the first name and last name fields are required fields, and they put your whole name in the last name field, which makes the site prompt you to make corrections. When you ‘click here’ to do so, the next page allows to to make the changes, but also asks for your credit card number and the last 4 digits of your social – which is all anyone would need to access your bank account!! I’ll bet that if you mail in the green form (which does not ask for this info) instead of going online, they’ll send another form asking for you to ‘verify’ your information, including the account number(s) and your social. This is a scary scam, because it looks so legit!
I selected option #2 (blue) and entered the info online, I entered the Refund number that appears at the top of the snail mail and then the website brought up my address and allowed me to change it if necessary, but there was no request for any part of my SS number or the credit card number or anything else personal. I suppose they already have that info about me.
I have travel abroad several times in the past 7 years and used more than $2000 on my visa total while traveling abroad. I have not received a refund form in the mail to be part of this lawsuit. Is there any way to apply for it online?
I took a the risk by sending the green form by certified mail and I heard that my bank was calling and I can’t wait to go after the holiday to find out if it was about this settlement. !!!!!Buyer beware!!!!!!!
http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS114011+03-Dec-2007+PRN 20071203
IF IN DOUBT, FOLLOW THIS LINK TO THE DEC 7 REUTERS ARTICLE ON THE CASE, WHICH IS US DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN FOR NY – MDL (MULTIPLE DISTRICT LITIGATION) CASE # 1409
Following this link (http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS114011+03-Dec-2007+PR N20071203) does bring up a page, but if you go to Reuters.com
and search their site for “CCF Settlement”, “foreign travel”, “credit card suit”, etc…well, they can’t seem to find anything on it. Also, you’ll notice that the font used on that page is quite different than the font used on other pages.
For $25, it’s just not worth it to me to verify my name and address. It still seems VERY phishy…yes, pun intended.
My problem is that the third, red, form is the only one that would be worth doing for me, if it is legit. I have been living outside the US since 1998, and during that time I charged enough to my US credit card that the amount I could potentially get back from filling out the “red” form is much more than $25 or a 1% estimate based on what the average person may have spent traveling abroad 1996-2006 (since the average person normally doesn’t travel abroad at all, or very rarely).
I still don’t feel comfortable sending my credit card info to these unknown people by mail or by web site. It doesn’t matter if the court case, the law firm, etc., are all legitimate – the question is whether these mailings and the web site come from a legitimate source. I have seen posts from people who plan to file the green or blue forms, which involve minimal risk. The red form option still seems both too good to be true, and too risky. Maybe its the people like me, who do have a significant amount of foreign transactions, who are the real targets of the scam?
Has anyone filed a red form?
I looked a little more carefully at the Option 2 form, and saw that it asks you to fill in your number of days spent outside the U.S., and to check some boxes about how often your travel was for business, vacation, visiting relatives or “other”.
I submitted a question to ccfsettlement.com web site asking how they would calculate the refund for a person who had lived in another country for 2665 days and had the spending pattern not of a traveler but of a person living their everyday life. (I would have to check “other” as my reason for travel). What would they assume as my daily credit card use? Knowing this would help me decide whether to use Option 2 or 3.
Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I also asked them outright to provide me with some assurance that they were not a phishing scam, since if I decide that Option 3 is better for me I will need to trust them with my credit card number and signature.
The site says they will respond to me inquiry within 10 business days.
There seems to be a growing amount of info on the Internet that this is legit, but I am still being cautious.
I know there must be others out there who lived outside the US during the time in question and used their US-issued credit cards. I would like hear from others in this situation – what have you decided to do about this? Also, I’d still like to know if anyone has submitted the Option 3 form, especially if there were any negative consequences.
I live abroad and have made thousands of dollars in foreign transactions on my USAA credit card over the last 10 years. I definitely qualify for Option 3. My problem is that, even though I have all my back statements, summing up the total dollar amount of my foreign transactions for each year requires quite a lot of time with my calculator. I called up USAA to ask them whether they would be willing to calculate this number for me and for others in a similar position. I imagined that it would be a pretty simple programming task for them, and they have a huge number of members overseas. USAA is known for its good service, but in this case they really ticked me off. First I basically got the runaround. When I finally got to a supervisor and forced them, politely, to actually deal with my question, their answer was no. Shame on USAA!
i lived over seas for 5 mo. no way will i give out my info. i hope this site is a save bet.
there are 2 other options that peopl can make: opt out or object to be part of the settlement. what’s the difference? The reason I ask is that I have over $300K of foriegn CC charges for the 1996-2006 period, and am not convinced I’ll get much back (due to high humber of claims).
I’m curious to know if anyone that has completed the forms either on line or via snail-mail have yet to receive any refund checks?
Thanks!
i have not yet, though i just submitted it a week ago.
I have used my CC overseas a LOT over the mentioned period and I did file refund option 3 on-line giving all the information requested. The source that suggested me to do so was beyond question. This has happened months ago. As of today nothing suspicious has happened with my CC account. As for receiving any refunds, I understand one has to wait till sometimes at the end of May 2008 when a decision will be made.
Does anybody know how much option #2 will pay?
On the form, it mentions “This option is recommended if you traveled outside of the US for more than one week or had foreign transactions of more than $2,500…”. Is the implication of this that the payment is something more than $25 for more than a week abroad?
Say they use a formula of $14 per week (ie, if you stayed 2 weeks you’d get $28, which is better than $25). That would be $2.00 per day. So if you were abroad for the entire 10 year period, would be 10 x 365 x $2 = $7300? That seems to me to be wildly high.
The CCFSettlement web site (and supporting legal documents) says there’s an “algorithm” that will be used to calculate this, but I can’t find what this is.
On the http://ccfsettlement.com/faqs/ page, under the section “How will the amount of my refund be determined?”, it mentions,
“Travel purpose and time outside the U.S. are factors captured in the U.S. Department of Commerce annual Survey of International Air Travelers, and can be used as predictors of trip expenditures outside of the U.S.”
So I went to the OTTI web site, and hunted around quite a bit, finally finding the following page:
Tourism Industries Publication: Departures and Payments for U.S. Travelers Abroad (Outbound) 1997
http://tinet.ita.doc.gov/cat/f-1997-15-001.html
There they have a chart of “A summary profile of U.S. Travelers abroad (traveling outside the U.S.) and payment figures (expenditures by U.S. travelers abroad)”.
Going to the bottom line number (total travelers and total spent), it looks like the average is about $1,317 per year.
So, my wild guess here is that your refund will be computed against this number (or something like it), which would be $13 per year (1%). If you were abroad for the entire 10 year period, that would be $130.
That seems to be somewhat low, especially compared to the original $7300 guess made at the beginning.
Again, this is wild speculation on my part, based on the research and assumptions outlined above. Clearly it’ll be a bit more complex than this, as they ask for the purpose of your travel, and presumably have different figures based on your response (I would guess business travel might rank higher than visiting friends for the rate computation, but again, this is just complete wild speculation on my part).
Does anybody have any better analysis or guess on how this is computed?
As they mention on the forms, your “highest” return will likely be with option #3 if you have extensive foreign transactions (and can calculate them), as it will pay up to 3% of your actual transaction amounts. In my case, I lived abroad almost all of that 10 year period, and I’ve got about $220,000 in foreign transactions, which would net me between $2,200 and $6,600 on the refund using option #3. If there was a way to compare option #2 with option #3, it would be much more useful to see which will give the better return (obviously option #2 will take much less time to compute, so if the results are comparable, this would be much easier to do).
Cheers!
–Mike–
I submitted the long form online, and recieved confirmation via email. Have not recieved further correspondence or any type of payment. For us the refund should be between 100 and 400 USD.
I am so paranoid now, having read so many e-mails and thoughts about the CCF settlement…being fake..or real…and can we trust the website and god knows what else….I have lived over seas since 1982! and stand to win a hell of a lot of money if I file option three of the ccf settlement, even if it only pertains from 96 to 2006..but still….should I submit on line or not……giveo out s.security numbers, credit card numnbers and banks nubmers? christ…it seems that if this ccf settlement were real…they WOULD NOT EVER ask for info……on line like this. I do have a ID for the website..I did receive a letter…in the mail…butg will file??? on line……Wher eis GOd lol …when you need him/it/her..to say…..”THOUGH FOOL OF LOWLY DOGS” for believing thoust stand to inherit thy retched greenbacks/dollars for scam! What do to…real or fake, real or fake? and time is runing out for m e……..I only have 8 more days to decide if i should submit………..
I think it is legit. Look: http://www.travelfinances.com/blog/index.php/2006/07/29/details-about- credit-card-currency-conversion-settlement-emerge/
But no way I’m sending my identity to that lawfirm. So what if it is legit?? Doesn’t make it a good idea.
Looks like, there is no need to really provide personal account numbers if you can provide just last 4 digits of SSN. But by doing so, it says “your refund may be reduced”. Since I don’t want to provide all accounts numbers but would like to try option 3, can any one guess out how much lower that would be?
ok it has been several month…the website says waiting for final approval.how long is all this goona take?
Go to the website once more. So it appears that there was some development, the court approved the settlement, but now appeals are pending. How long could that possibly take?
http://www.ccfsettlement.com/home/