Congressional report details junk fees in air travel

For two decades airlines have used and profited from their “unbundling” strategy—charging separately for individual products and services that were once included in the price of a plane ticket. Just in time for the holidays, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, chair of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), last week released a Majority staff report […]

Elon Musk is wrong to call the CFPB a “duplicative regulatory agency” and for it to be “deleted”

Earlier today, Elon Musk posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that the CFPB should be deleted as a duplicative regulatory agency. I’m not sure why Musk considers the CFPB duplicative or what he thinks it is duplicative of (or if he himself knows), but it is simply wrong to call the CPB duplicative. Some […]

Treasury OIG Finds Taxpayers Spent $842m in fees for Refund Anticipation Loans

Earlier this month, the Department of Treasury’s Office of Inspector General issued a report on refund advance and refund transfer products sold to taxpayers, finding that nearly 16% of taxpayers used such products for the 2023 tax year– with nearly 80% of those taxpayers having worked with just 7 tax return preparation companies. The report […]

NY High Court okays Uber “clickwrap” arbitration agreement

In September, I blogged about a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision to review an intermediate appellate court decision holding that Uber’s “clickwrap” arbitration agreement was not enforceable under Pennsylvania law, as mutual assent was lacking based on the way it was presented to a user. Today, the New York Court of Appeals issued its own decision […]

Steiger Fellowship provides paid consumer law summer internships for law students, including 1Ls

Here’s the announcement: The Janet D. Steiger Fellowship Project provides law students with the extraordinary opportunity to work in the consumer protection departments of state and territorial Offices of Attorneys General and other consumer protection agencies, as well as the National Association of Attorneys General and the Attorney General’s Office of the District of Columbia. […]

Andrea Boyack discusses her survey of abusive boilerplate terms on the Consumer Finance Monitor Podcast

Here. From the description of the episode: Today, we are joined again by Professor Boyack who has written a follow-up article entitled: “Abuse of Contract: Boilerplate Erasure of Consumer Counterparty Rights,” University of Missouri School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2024-03, which is the subject of our new show. The abstract of her […]

Berkeley Center for Consumer Law & Economic Justice hiring policy director

We received the following announcement: We’re Hiring A Policy Director! At the UC Berkeley Center for Consumer Law & Economic Justice, we work to establish equity and fairness in the marketplace. We believe that building economic justice means developing and enforcing laws that fight fraud and deception, that protect low-income communities and communities of color, […]

On Daubert and Class Certification

The Sixth Circuit today vacated a district court’s certification of 10 classes relating to claims about Nissan’s automatic electronic braking systems. The court first held that the district court had inadequately considered commonality and predominance. It then went onto address a question that has divided the circuits over the past decade- whether expert testimony considered […]

CFPB establishes supervisory authority over large payment apps

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau this week issued a final rule to define larger players in the market of “general-use digital consumer payment applications.” Under the rule, the bureau institutes supervisory authority over large nonbank payment app providers to assess their compliance with consumer financial laws. This covers apps that are used for consumers’ general use […]