"Congratulations! You've won a free cruise!" Sound familiar? If it does you could be due for a cash settlement.
Over the last few years people have been receiving automated calls offering them a free cruise if they called a 1-800 number and filled out some paperwork. It sounds like an obvious scam, but there were real cruises involved.
The problem was to receive your "free" 2-day cruise you had to pay fees and taxes that added up to at least $60. Meanwhile, employees would try to up-sell you, force you to attend a timeshare presentation or even hang up the phone if you didn't agree to spend more money.
But what finally got the company behind these calls in trouble was that recorded message they used. Resort Marketing Group Inc., who represented companies like Royal Caribbean and Carnival, may have been violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act with their "robocalls."
That could mean a cash settlement if you received one of their calls. So how can you check if you qualify?
Resort Marketing has agreed to settle for calls made between July 23, 2009 and March 8, 2014, and will pay as much as $900 to people who received the calls.
To check if you qualify, you'll have to visit the website for the class action lawsuit and check if your phone number was in Resort Marketing's database. If it was, you can receive $300 for each call, up to 3 calls for a total of $900.
Applying for the settlement will also mean sending in some personal information, but you can complete this step by mail if you don't feel comfortable applying online. You have until November 3, 2017 to see if you qualify, but don't count on the money just yet.
Other people already involved in the lawsuit have a lot of options left in front of them, and it could change the settlement. A Final Approval hearing is scheduled for April 4, and the company wouldn't be required to pay anything until months later.
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[H/T: Fox News]