The class involved in the suit numbers about 210,000 people, and the settlement, reached after roughly a year of mediation, amounts to a little more than $200 each, according to the daily, which cites papers filed Friday in North Carolina federal court. Each of the suit's five named plaintiffs would collect $20,000.
The settlement still requires a judge's approval, and USAA officials said they continue to dispute the allegations in the suit, according to the Express-News.
A USAA spokesman told the newspaper that while company officials dispute the suit's claims, they decided it was best to avoid “lengthy and expensive litigation.” The company's primary customer base is members of the U.S. military and their families.
“Before this lawsuit was filed, we had already compensated members for errors that may have occurred related to the allegations in the lawsuit,” spokesman USAA spokesman Roger Wildermuth said in a statement. “Roughly half of the announced settlement amount is simply reissuing checks we had previously mailed that our members never cashed.”
If the settlement is approved, it would close out a three-year legal dispute that also accused USAA of failing to make adequate efforts to ensure customers actually received those checks.
The company mailed out 859,000 checks in 2021 to compensate members for alleged overcharges. However, many of those checks weren't cashed because they were delivered in “a nondescript envelope that appeared to many service members as a solicitation or junk mail,’” the Express-News reports, citing an amended petition filed by plaintiffs.
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