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New Zealand's fees action targets Kiwibank too

14 November 2013 5:45PM
The New Zealand version of the class action lawsuit targeting Australasian banks over penalty fees has named Kiwibank as the second bank it will target.The Fair Play on Fees class action being run by Auckland lawyer Andrew Hooker, and backed by Slater and Gordon, and Litigation Lending Services, lodged a claim against ANZ in the Auckland High Court in June. The case is running in tandem with a similar one in Australia.Hooker said the class action had already signed up 6000 Kiwibank customers who said they had been unfairly charged for overdraft and credit card fees. He said the campaign could see as many as 10,000 Kiwibank customers filing a claim in the High Court before the November 21 deadline."We also encourage customers of all the remaining banks who have been affected by penalty fees to sign up to the Fair Play on Fees action," Hooker said.He said 14,000 ANZ customers has signed up for the class action. ANZ customers have until December 13 to sign up.Overall, 35,000 New Zealand bank customers have expressed an interest in joining the class action against the major banks, which would be the first mass consumer class action in New Zealand legal history. ANZ is contesting the case.The lead plaintiffs for the case are Auckland couple Leanne and Sydney Briggs, who had banked with Kiwibank for six and a half years and been charged 100 default fees costing almost NZ$2000. Briggs said she was regularly charged for not having enough money in her account, even though she had transferred money into the account the previous day.She said she was once charged NZ$10 plus interest for being two cents overdrawn on a mortgage payment for a few days.Hooker said many Kiwibank complainants had joined the state-owned bank since its creation in 2002 because of frustrations with New Zealand's Big Four Australian-owned banks."These customers were then bitterly disappointed to find they were treated no differently by joining a Kiwi-owned bank," he said.The class action would argue the payment of penalty fees charged by Kiwibank significantly outweighed the cost of the transactions to reverse or dishonour payments.Kiwibank declined to comment.

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