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The payroll service company Automatic Data Processing Inc. (ADP) was hit with a $5 million class action lawsuit alleging that it deducted fees illegally from debit cards that are loaded with employees wages.
The ADP class action lawsuit was filed by Pennsylvania resident Joshua Silfee. He alleges that the various fees that are taken out of employees’ wages, if they opt to use ADP’s paycard system, violate Pennsylvania’s Wage Payment and Collection Law (WPCL).
ADP offers payroll services to businesses by handling their payroll processing for them.
“As part of its suite of payroll products and services offered to its clients, ADP provides employees the option of paying their employees through a paycard system, called TotalPay,” the ADP class action lawsuit explains.
ADP clients’ employees can choose to be paid through the TotalPay paycard, direct deposit or through a traditional paycheck.
If the employee chooses the paycard option, “ADP issues and administers this paycard system, whereby each employee is provided with a VISA branded TotalPay paycard, which is loaded each pay period with the employees net earnings.”
Silfee was an employee of ERG Staffing Service, LLC in Pennsylvania. ERG hired ADP to handle the payroll processing for the company. Silfee had a TotalPay paycard issued by ADP that was loaded with his wages each pay period.
These paycards, however, do come with a variety of fees, which include “an enrollment fee, account maintenance fees, automatic teller machine (ATM) withdrawal fees, balance inquiry fees, point of sale purchase fees, and an account closure fee.”
Those “fees are deducted by ADP from the balance of the funds loaded onto the TotalPay paycard.”
Silfee claims that because “these unavoidable fees” are deducted from the paycards, employees end up “receiving less than the full amount of wages owed to them and [it] constitutes an unauthorized deduction from wages in violation of the WPCL.”
According to the WPCL, “every employer shall pay all wages, other than fringe benefits and supplements, due to his employees on regular paydays.”
“The wages shall be paid in lawful money of the United States or check except that deductions provided by the law,” the Pennsylvania statute continues.
While there are legal deductions allowed under state law, Silfee says that it does not appear that ADP got the paycard deductions approved by state regulators.
“On information and belief, the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry has never evaluated and authorized ADP’s TotalPay Card fee deductions as in conformity with the intent and purpose of the WPCL,” Silfee says in his ADP class action lawsuit.
“ADP’s failure to pay the full amount of wages due, as required by Pennsylvania law, represents a violation of their unwritten agreement with plaintiff and the members of the proposed class,” he adds.
Silfee says that he does not know how much is owed to him and the other potential Class members, but that he “believes that such information will become available during the course of discovery,” but he believes that the total amount for the whole Class will exceed $5 million.
Silfee is represented by Gary Lynch of Carlson Lynch LTD.
Counsel information for ADP was not immediately available.
The ADP Class Action Lawsuit is Silfee v. Automatic Data Processing Inc., Case No. 2:14-cv-04908, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
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4 thoughts onADP Faces Class Action On Fees Attached to TotalPay Debit Cards
ADP can suck my a s s for what they have done to me
For three months my son’s pay card has been on hold. He has a balance of only 172.00 that he has no access to. Asp asked for three pieces if identification but comes up.with numerous excuses as to why they cannot release the hold. This has been both agrivating and physically draining for my son who only wants his payment. We have contacted Adp total pay on numerous occasions and have been given the run around. This is a scam and they are lookoing to pray on the young and vulnerable. I cannot believe that Sesame Place choose to deal with this type if service to employees. Makes you want to question sesame place and their employee practices as well!
We should come together and sue for this gasoline thing
ADP has switched to ALINE, but they are continuing the fee nonsense in ways that are even more egregious. I wish I could join this lawsuit. !!!!! I am an employee who is stuck with ALINE service for getting my paycheck. I have never been an unbanked person; in fact, I have done business with one bank for over 40 years. ADP ALINE has just hatched a scheme with a con-artist company called EVOLVE MONEY. The scheme works by having virtually all of the paycheck services go through EVOLVE, a data gathering company. To this end they have eliminated direct deposit and the ability to transfer your pay directly to your own bank. If you are stupid enough to sign up for their EVOLVE bill pay service, your paycheck goes into a pool of money from which you supposedly can pay bills or make other payments with EVOLVE acting as your agent–in effect giving them Power of Attorney. But unlike a real Power of Attorney, there is no legal accountability because you sign it away. Your personal data is then mined and sold. If you refuse to join EVOLVE, they still get you. You are now stuck using the ALINE card itself to pay for things(more data mining), or else doing business with their member banks who also mine your personal data. Employees cannot opt out of this. I tried. It used to be that you could cash out the full amount of your pay from ALINE and deposit it to your own bank or credit union through use of a convenience check. Now you cannot transfer the money to your bank anymore and you cannot get a convenience check to deposit to your own bank anymore. The problem is that if you work according to their scheme, then ADP and EVOLVE become your usiness partners according to the law and they have access to all of your personal information, from when and where you shop, to information about your living arrangements (whether you rent or own, and who you pay for it), to information about your healthcare–which doctors you see and why. Just imagine! YOUR BOSS and other Strangers will know why you went to the DOCTOR and when, what your credit score is, who you owe money to, even how much money YOUR SPOUSE has, and there is nothing you can do about it. This information can be openly shared with anyone they want to share it with, and it can even be used against you. ADP and EVOLVE use this system to mine and amass a large data base of information that they can then sell to anyone they like legally because when you sign up, you automatically give them permission to do this. Imagine strange companies and people rifling through your credit reports. Just think of all the junk snail mail and email you will be stuck with! Just imagine what an identity thief can do with this information. AND for good measure, ADP and EVOLVE have clauses in their agreement that hold them completely harmless should someone get ahold of your personal data.
Another part of the scheme is KEEPING YOUR PAY AS LONG AS POSSIBLE AND EARNING INTEREST ON THE MONEY, interest that is not paid to you. To do this, they now refuse to allow you to write a convenience check to yourself for your full net pay and they refuse transfers to a bank. If you want to get your full pay, you have to go to one of their member banks (that you may not even be doing business with) to get your money. Once again, the problem is that if you do that, you are signing up to have all of your personal information sold. Another issue is that if you try to get your pay from an ATM, you can never get all of the money on payday because ATMs only give money in $20 increments. So some of your money is always left behind for them to earn interest on. The net result is that you may never get your full amount of pay out without a fee.
I just wasted some time and gasoline to test the lie I was told today, July 3, 2015 by Tony at the ADP ALINE helpline, 1-877-237-4321. When I tried to get a convenience check written for the total amount of my rightfully due pay for the week, he told me that under this new EVOLVE/ADP scheme I could not get a convenience check unless my card is lost or stolen, and that I could GO TO ANY VISA-RELATED BANK OR INSTITUTION TO CASH OUT THE MONEY ON THE ALINE CARD AND I WOULD NOT BE CHARGED A FEE. When I replied that I didn’t think that MY BANK OR MY CREDIT UNION would cash out the money without charging a fee, he repeated that statement. Bear in mind that BOTH MY BANK and MY CREDIT UNION ARE VISA-Related institutions.
Tony LIED. Neither MY BANK nor MY CREDIT UNION would cash out the ALINE Card without charging me a fee. The fee is equal to an hour’s pay. So I found out that it will cost one hour’s pay to get paid under these circumstances. Either I pay a fee of one-hour’s pay or else I go to an ATM and leave money behind because the ATM only pays out in increments of $20. Either way, I LOSE. It is now costing me money TO WORK.
With ADP ALINE, the EMPLOYEE is always the loser. You cannot win. You are going to have your personal information sold whether you like it or not and you cannot opt out, or you are going to have to continually short your pay every week by getting not being able to get all of your pay from the ATM or fees are going to eat your paycheck up. There is no opt out at all. This system turns employees into cash cows, NO MATTER WHAT. Everywhere you turn, your pocket is picked. I cannot get my pay without giving up some of it. Depending on what I make I could end up losing up to $1000 per year to get my paychecks. So ADP ALINE is exactly like the company store of olden times. TotalPay is now ALINE in every single way.
I am filing a complaint with the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry because the net result of these schemes is that you cannot get your pay on payday unless you agree to hand over all of your personal information or pay fees of one type or another, and thats illegal under Pennsylvania Law.