All About Citizens Bank Lawsuits

Citizens Bank settled for 3.8 million dollars when a class action lawsuit was filed in 2016 stating that Citizens Bank charged their customers annual fees that were incorrect. Citizens Bank did not admit wrongdoing but they still settled.This class action lawsuit represented over 41000 Citizens Bank lines of credit or home equity lines of credit.

The CFPB filed a lawsuit against Citizens Bank in 2020 stating that Citizens Bank had violated TILA, and Regulation Z by failing to manage and respond to credit card disputes. Allegedly Citizens Bank would automatically deny consumer billing error notices instead of actually looking at your customer complaints over credit card mistakes. When consumers disputed credit card transactions or submitted fraud claims, the CFPB alleged that Citizens Bank failed to send acknowledgement letters or denial notices. Furthermore this lawsuit alleged that Citizens Bank violated TILA by failing to provide credit counseling referrals when customers called asking for them.

Citizens Bank reached a settlement in a class-action lawsuit about violations of the telephone consumer protection act. A lawsuit was filed against Citizens Bank for making robocalls, using an automatic telephone dialing system with pre-recorded messages to individuals who had not given consent. This settlement was a result of compromise, resulting in 4.5 million dollars in compensation to all individuals who received cell phone calls with pre-recorded voices or automatic telephone dialing systems from Citizens Bank between 2009 and 2015.

Citizens Bank faced another lawsuit in 2016 about miscalculating minimum payments for borrowers who had a home equity line of credit. Allegedly Citizens Bank did not properly calculate minimum payments using a level amortization method and instead accelerated the repayment of principal which meant that the first seven years of home equity lines of credit had higher minimum payments than agreed upon. 

Three years earlier in 2013 Citizens Bank was the subject of a class action lawsuit alleging that their overdraft fees were too much and not what was agreed upon in consumer agreements. Citizens Bank agreed to pay 137.5 million dollars as a settlement for the consumers who faced huge amounts of overdraft fees.

Citizens Bank faced a class action lawsuit in the state of Pennsylvania stating that the ATM fees they charged customers were illegal because they didn’t provide proper advanced notice. The electronic fund transfer act says that all ATM machines must have a notice of fees posted in a clearly visible area and that consumers must be given notice about ATM fees before they reach the point in their transaction where they are not able to cancel the transaction. In this lawsuit the plaintiff alleged that Citizens Bank ATM fees did not have proper displays, and they were placed near the ground where users were unable to see them.

Remember how government agencies and former employees were typically able to file lawsuits against companies like Citizens Bank even if you weren’t? This is exactly what happened in 2012 when a class-action lawsuit was filed against Citizens Bank for unpaid overtime wages from their loan officers.