Wright-Patt Credit Union Facing Lawsuit Over Allegedly Unauthorized Penalties, Fees

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Wright-Patt Credit Union, Inc. has been hit with a proposed class action over claims that the company charges accountholders penalties and fees that aren’t permitted by their service contracts.

According to the lawsuit, the defendant’s service contract authorizes just one non-sufficient funds (NSF) fee per applicable transaction. In breach of this agreement, however, the credit union allegedly applies multiple $25 penalties for insufficient funds to the same transaction – one for when the payment is first attempted and another when the payment is reprocessed a few days later.

“There is zero indication in the account documents that the same ‘item’ is eligible to incur multiple NSF Fees,” the complaint states. “Instead, the General Fee Schedule plainly states that only a single $25 NSF Fee will be assessed per item.”

The case goes on to claim that Wright-Patt accountholders are hit by surprise with at least two separate fees during the course of a cash withdrawal from an out-of-network ATM. In addition to a fee charged by the out-of-network ATM operator, customers must also pay a fee to the defendant for withdrawing funds, plus another fee if they perform a balance inquiry. The suit says reasonable customers do not expect a balance inquiry to be considered a separate transaction “worthy of a separate fee,” and the credit union allegedly does not properly inform them of all the fees they’ll face during a cash withdrawal.

All told, the case argues the defendant’s alleged misconduct throws accountholders into an “increasingly devastating cycle of fees.”