It is always nice to receive an amount of money that falls from the sky. But what frustration when, at the moment of touching it, it slips away. This is what happened to a number of people eligible for the $20 payout in the optical disc drive class action. The Interac transfer intended for them either did not work or was canceled by their bank altogether.

This issue affects clients of CIBC and its Simplii division, according to the class action website. But it also affects people who have a bank account at BMO, confirmed a customer service representative from RicePoint, the company responsible for handling payments.

A first email containing a password was sent at the end of June to all those who had submitted a complaint. A few days later, the wire transfer of $20 was sent to them. Instead, BMO customers received a message telling them that the transaction had been “cancelled”, without specifying by whom or why.

“For this reason, you can no longer deposit these funds,” the email read.

BMO explains that Interac transfers were canceled because they contained characters “not recognized” by its security experts. In fact, an apostrophe had curiously been transformed into “â€TM”.

On the side of CIBC, we did not seem too aware of the problem. “Our team is reviewing the matter,” responded a spokesperson. However, the RicePoint site explicitly names this financial institution and its Simplii division, and recommends using the application rather than the website to make the deposit.

“To date, payments from this settlement distribution have a relatively high collection rate of around 70%,” the company specializing in class action settlements told La Presse.

Also according to RicePoint, transfers that did not work will be rerouted “at a later date”. “Once the dates and terms of these reissued payments are established, they will be posted on the settlement website. » As a last resort, a check will be issued.

So there’s no need to call RicePoint to figure out what happened and get his $20.

These payments follow settlement agreements totaling C$29.7 million with 10 companies, including Panasonic, Phillips, Pioneer and Sony. They were accused of conspiring to fix the prices of optical disc drives (LDOs) contained in various devices such as computers, game consoles and compact disc recorders.