The U.S. Supreme Court today, in a 7-2 decision, ruled in favor of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, rejecting a challenge brought by payday lenders to Congress’s decision about how to fund the agency. The case came to the Court after the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals’ unprecedented ruling that funding for the Bureau’s violates […]
After several delays, the House today passed a five-year reauthorization bill for the FAA, which had previously passed the Senate. The bipartisan bill includes a number of consumer protection provisions, including provisions related to: refunds for cancellations and significant delays seating for travel with children and passengers with disabilities access to customer service agents The […]
The parties in consolidated class actions against GoDaddy brought under the TCPA negotiated a settlement, under which Go Daddy would provide up to $35 million to pay both class members’ claims and up to $10.5 million to their lawyers as attorney’s fees. The district court certified a settlement class. The day Rule 23(c)(2) notices were […]
The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) regulates unsolicited calls using “any automatic telephone dialing system [(ATDS)] or an artificial or prerecorded voice.” The statute defines an automatic telephone dialing system as “equipment which has the capacity…to store or produce telephone numbers to be called, using a random or sequential number generator; and…to dial such numbers.” […]
Following an investigation of the largest wireless providers’ advertising, marketing, and sales practices, 50 state AGs announced a settlement to discourage misleading and deceptive conduct. The cell phone companies agreed to pay a total of $10.25 million to change their practices. Specifically, the AGs investigated the sales tactics of AT&T Mobility, LLC, Cellco Partnership (doing […]
Bloomberg’s Evan Weinberger has the story, as well as a link to the opinion, here. (Behind a paywall.) Addendum from Allison: The order granting an injunction is here. CNBC’s story is here.
Junk fees are likely to feature in the election this year, so for that reason alone, it would be useful to know what they are. Sometimes they seem to be defined by examples; you can find such a list of examples (as well as a definition that strikes me as underinclusive) here. Because the very […]
On Tuesday, the CFPB issued an order against Chime Financial, finding that it failed to timely refund consumers’ balances after they closed their accounts. Chime, a financial technology company, is not itself a bank, but partners with regional banks to provide certain mobile banking services. This model deprives consumers of many of the protections of […]
On Wednesday, Colorado lawmakers passed a sweeping artificial intelligence regulation bill. The legislation seeks to protect consumers from algorithmic discrimination when AI is used to make life-altering decisions, such as about a person’s employment, education or health care. It also included consumer rights provisions such as the right to know when AI is being used […]
Recently someone texted me a picture of a product. When I pulled it up on the seller’s website, the displayed price was twice the price listed in the texted picture. And here’s a piece that may address that discrepancy: Haggai Porat of Harvard and the Tel Aviv University School of Economics has written Algorithmic Personalized […]