Do I Need An Attorney To Pay Myself Back?
I
have been a long term member of CSAA (California State Automobile Association), AAA in many parts of the country. My 30 year experience is that CSAA is a stellar insurance company for auto and home owners insurance. They offer many other products but I’m focusing on the insurance side right now.
Apparently, there is a class action law suit against the insurance company. I receive a notice in the form of a postcard size mailer informing me that if I wanted to be included, fill this out and return it. I read the very small font content, I was able to gather these facts.
CSAA has been overcharging their customers who made payments rather than paying in full. This applied to the years 1993 to 2011, and it applied to both automobile and homeowners insurance. Now before you start with the “big insurance companies have been ripping us off” speech, let me finish.
The settlement looks like this. For every policy in which payments were made, rather than paying in full for the annual premium, members of CSAA will be awarded $.84. That’s not a misprint – 84 cents! It seems that CSAA made a minor error, and probably needs to pay this back. The insurance company has set aside up to $3,000,000 to pay back this error.
I had 4 insurance policies with CSAA. If I made payments on ALL of the policies during this 9 years period; I could win be awarded - $30.24 (4x9x.84) To get this I’m sure I will be doing more work than filling out the postcard that I received. (I made payments on one of the policies, one time. I’m looking at a $.84 payoff.)
As I continued to read, I got angry! Not at CSAA, but with the attornies who 
brought the class action law suit.
The fees for the attorneys are set at $2,320,000.00.
Wow! It cost 2.3 million dollars to return “up to” 3 million dollars.
CSAA is not a non-profit organization, but they do reduce our premium cost by their profits earned. That’s right, if the company makes money, my premium goes down. Maybe the 84 cents could have been added to that sum rather than through legal action. Based on the numbers given, it cost about a dollor to get a dollar back. If I’m paying (through premium reductions lost) the dollar to get that dollar back, I’m not getting anything!
I think that this is a good example of why we need tort reform in our legal system.
What do you think?
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