According to court documents Pilot has agreed to pay all of the amounts owed to the lawsuits’ plaintiffs plus 6 percent interest on the principal owed.
Moreover, Pilot is responsible for paying administrative and accounting fees, attorney’s fees and court costs. Pilot has also agreed to be “permanently enjoined” from withholding rebates deceptively from customers.
Pilot Flying J owner and CEO Jimmy Haslam wrote an open letter to customers last week saying the truck stop chain has already performed internal audits on all of its 3,000 diesel contracts and has sent checks to customers who were owed money repaying them in full and with interest. He also said the company had as of June 30 ended all manual rebate calculations.
The manual rebate calculations were the source of the alleged fraudulent activity, as rebates were not calculated automatically but by a Pilot salesperson.
In a statement released July 16 after the settlement, Haslam said Pilot will issue supplemental checks to customers for “any additional interest not included in the original calculation.”
According to the class-action settlement, any Pilot customer can join the class of plaintiffs and have Pilot perform an audit on their account. Per the settlement, Pilot must perform internal audits for the affected accounts to determine how much is owed, which will then be confirmed by independent accountants selected by the court.
