MSE News: Mastercard class action legal claim refused by tribunal

Former_MSE_Steve_1

An unprecedented legal bid to bring a class action lawsuit against Mastercard - which could have potentially seen 46 million consumers each receive £100s in compensation - has been refused by a tribunal...

Read the full story:
'Mastercard class action legal claim refused by tribunal'

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agrinnall

Doesn't surprise me at all, I don't think there was ever any chance of such an action succeeding and I imagine the tribunal thought it would be a huge waste of money to even hear it.

eskbanker

MSE perpetuating the myth by referring to "Merricks' claim that Mastercard broke competition law for 15 years between 1992 and 2007 by charging excessive 'interchange fees' – the fees a retailer pays to your credit or debit card company when you use your card to shop" - for the umpteenth time interchange fees are not those paid by the retailer, they're levied between issuing banks and acquirers! Merchant service charges are a different issue....

Pagett

The claim was being brought on behalf of ALL affected UK shoppers - unless they chose to opt out of it - and would have likely affected anyone living in the UK, who was of working age at any point between 1992 and 2008, regardless of whether they had a Mastercard.

Well that's me. I was never aware of the attempt until now so was obviously never aware of an opt-out option.
How anyone thinks they can take legal action on my behalf without my knowledge or consent is beyond me.

boo_star

Pagett wrote: »

Well that's me. I was never aware of the attempt until now so was obviously never aware of an opt-out option.
How anyone thinks they can take legal action on my behalf without my knowledge or consent is beyond me.

According to the Wikipedia article on class action lawsuits...

However, a sectoral mechanism was adopted by the Consumer Rights Act 2015, taking effect on 1 October 2015. Under the provisions therein, opt-in or opt-out collective procedures may be certified for breaches of competition law

So it appears they think they can do it because they're allowed to.

redux

If someone wants to take out a useful class action against credit card practices, they should apply to close down abuse of or all use of so-called dynamic currency conversion, in which retailers fraudulently add several per cent to the price to visitors to their country while 'helpfully' showing the transaction in the user's home currency.