So, today, I’m trying to actually use two prepaid credit cards that I’ve gotten from class action lawsuits. One for $12.15, and one for $12.60. (Something about the numbers being so close to each other is another sketchy detail about how all of this works, but I digress.) I tried to load them into Amazon, thinking they would get used up in order, but no. You can only specify one credit card in Amazon, and neither of them have enough money on them to even cover a pack of gum these days.
I briefly toyed with the idea of deleting the details, and forgetting they exist, but then determined I was going to find a way to use them out of sheer spite. However, this raised the question of what happens to the money that gets “awarded” from class-action lawsuits but which never gets spent, thanks to how difficult they make it to do so. According to Claude, the answer is yet another layer of scummy grifting on top of several existing layers: the “fintech” companies that issue the pre-paid cards keep it.
So they get paid twice.
Of course.
Consumer protection laws don’t prevent pre-paid card providers from charging carrying fees, so the pittance you get from the settlement can be clawed back in a matter of months after the fees kick in.
Apparently, the only “fix” here is to “buy” Amazon gift cards with the pre-paid credit cards as soon as you get them, and then use that money when making a purchase. And after doing just that, I now see that I can “recharge my balance” of gift money on Amazon directly, without having to buy a gift card and then redeem it. I feel a little silly, but hey, this is my first rodeo.
After filling in the claim forms, and then filling out the pre-paid card forms, and now dealing with Amazon — trying to resubmit the order in various ways before finally canceling the previous order and starting all over from scratch — and getting dozens of emails about all of this — it’s probably cost me several hours to get and spend this money, but at least I’ve made sure that the tiny bit of money that is supposed to address whatever grievance I supposedly had is actually used by me, and not vacuumed up by yet another scummy late-stage-capitalism parasite.
While going through this, I estimated that half the money awarded probably got lost in all of this (and wound up in the pre-paid card providers’ pockets), but the previously-linked Claude conversation says it’s more like 85%-99%.
Unreal.