Lenny's story

I recently received a statement for my Fleet credit card, which is interesting, because I haven't used the card in months, and possibly ever. (I used to have a BayBank, then a BankBoston credit card, but I don't think I've used it since it became Fleet.) It was sent so they could also send me a change to my cardmember agreement, which states that cardmembers would be subject arbitration (and could not participate in any litigation against Fleet) unless they sent in an Arbitration Rejection Letter to Fleet rejecting the agreement (which would preserve the rights they used to have). Such a rejection letter must be received by them within 35 calendar days of the closing date of the statement.

And why are they doing this? Because they're currently the target of a lot of class action lawsuits, and are hoping that anyone who doesn't send in such a letter will therefore be disqualified as a possible member of the class action.

Needless to say, it may behoove those who do any business with Fleet to see if they're received such a bunch of legalese, and to send in the rejection letter ASAP. They provide a phone number you can call to get summaries of the class actions (you have to supply your Fleet credit card number before it will talk to you), and you an hear 30-second descriptions of the lawsuits, or get them mailed to you. (Since they haven't said anything about charging for these, I assume it's free.) It took me about half an hour to hear all the descriptions, because there at at least 20 of them. (You can skip the descriptions and just get them mailed to you, but it'll still probably take 10 minutes to go through them all.) At the very end, you'll be asked if you want to have mailed to you any others that are filed between Jan 16 2001 and your arbitration date cutoff. I had them mail me copies of everything. If nothing else, it'll probably cost them a lot of postage, and I may learn something.

Yow.

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