Paying for Christmas: Class Action Rebates

You’re getting ripped off. Every year the products you regularly use steal money they rightfully owe to you. In the first of a two-part series I’m going to explain how I get the money I’m owed and use it to help pay for Christmas gift giving. Then, I’m going to show you how make sure you’re getting what you’re owed too.

All About that Action, with a Touch of Class

There are millions of products available to consumers for purchase in the United States. Every year some number of the manufacturers of those products break the law and face penalties that lead to damages they must pay to their customers. Those damages are doled out in the form of “class action lawsuits” in which the manufacturer agrees to pay a large amount of money spread out to thousands of their customers harmed by whatever illegal thing it was that they did.

Take Volkswagen for example. In 2015 it was revealed they had, for years, been cheating emissions tests intentionally to make it look like their cars were more fuel efficient than they actually were. Computer programmers designed the cars to recognize when the vehicle’s emissions were being tested and to fudge the numbers leading to a massive class action lawsuit against them. Affected owners received $1,000 plus $2,000 in bonus value for trading in their defective vehicles.

When the companies you buy goods from break the law, their punishment involves reimbursing us, the affected consumers. The types of companies that have paid their consumers settlements this year is astounding and runs the gamut. Here are just a few products you could have been paid for in 2016 if you had purchased them during certain time periods:

• ·         Potatoes
• ·         Milk
• ·         Red Bull
• ·         Batteries
• ·         Chocolate
• ·         Stevia
• ·         LCD screens in your laptop, mobile device, or TV
• ·         Pretzels
• ·         For using Facebook
• ·         And many, many more

There isn’t a consumer in America who isn’t buying at least one of the items on that list!

Gettin’ Paid

So how do you get paid the money you’re owed? Do you have to go to court or hire a lawyer? Where do you find out what products might owe you money? The answer: it’s actually very simple, free, and you don’t need a lawyer or to make a court appearance. The secret? ClassActionRebates.com!

Every month ClassActionRebates.com updates their site with the latest lawsuits American consumers are eligible for. You simply follow the links, fill out a form (you usually don’t even need a receipt!) and 6-8 weeks later a check shows up in your mail box. If you’re too lazy to check a website every month (guilty!) simply sign up for the email list on their website. Each month they send me an email with a list of products I may have used that owe me money. I scan the list, decide if I’m a member of any of the affected classes, click the link, fill out the form, and sit back waiting for my cash money. Here’s what they do in their own words:

Class Action Rebates: How it Works Video from Baby Sign Language on Vimeo.

Now I know some of my readers are well-to-do software engineers and upper middle class white collar workers banking six figures a year asking themselves, “Come on Bill, is this really worth my time?” Here’s a look at my class action haul for 2016, the lowest I’ve earned since I started tracking a few years ago (and I’m still waiting on about $200 from the LCD lawsuit):

• ·         $6.26 from Red Bull (in two checks: the first was what I was owed, the second was split amongst everyone who received the first payment with what was left after all claims were filed)
• ·         $7.50 from Ghirardelli Chocolates
• ·         $6.00 from Duracell
• ·         $44.08 from Kashi
• ·         $30.49 from the potato industry
• ·         $16.00 from Stevia in the Raw
• ·         $10 from Snyder’s Pretzels
• ·         $15 from Facebook
• ·         Grand total: $135.33

$135.33 does a pretty good job of paying for Christmas gifts, which is what we set class action rebate funds aside to do. After counting the funds my wife also earned from the lawsuits she qualified for, we’re sitting on about $300 in extra cash we can use to make sure Christmas is full and happy. All this in a year where our total in class action rebates were the lowest we’ve ever received! Last year Toyota alone paid me over $200.

So how much time did I spend earning this money? All told I’d estimate I spend a minute each month reviewing the email I get from ClassActionRebates.com, then up to 2 minutes filling out each form. That’s 16 minutes in forms and 12 minutes in emails, but we’ll round up and call it a full half hour. $135 for 30 minutes of work is an hourly rate of $270. If you earned that wage as your regular wage you’d make nearly $11,000 per week, or a half million dollars a year! Even the most handsomely financed software engineers aren’t typically pulling in a half million dollars each year. So yeah, it almost certainly is worth your time. Plus, having an extra “allowance” for our Christmas gift giving means it’s a lot easier for us to hit our budget every year.

Even if you do make more than a half million in income each year, it’s your right to get the money you owe from these companies. They broke the law, harmed you with their products, and are morally culpable to make it right on your behalf. Don’t let them get away with it! GET YOUR MONEY.

Perjury and You

It’s exciting to get the money owed to you from class action rebates. But remember: when you file your claim, you’re certifying under penalty of law that you truly purchased the products you’re claiming. If you lie about that you’re committing a crime: perjury, or lying to the courts. So as exciting as it is to get the money you’re owed, make sure you only file in the suits that you’re actually qualified to receive lest you face legal consequences. There are so many bad actors each year, you don’t need to lie to make sure you get paid what you’re owed.

Next week I’ll go over the second part of this series detailing how we’re paying for our Christmas gifts this year with a brand new tool I found out about earlier in 2016. Don’t want to miss it? Make sure to sign up for our email list below to read that update and every new blog here at The Bill Stark Blog!