The Hill reports: Two senators are pushing a new bipartisan bill to crack down on illegal robocall scams, raising the maximum civil fine for violators to $10,000 per call. Sens. John Thune (R-S.D.), the current chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) on Friday unveiled their Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and […]
Author Archives: Allison Zieve
Consumer Union, the non-profit consumer-advocacy organization founded in 1936, has changed its name to Consumer Reports Advocacy. The new website is here. The well-known Consumer Reports magazine is the work of Consumers Union, and now the organization and the magazine will be more closely linked by name.
CBS News reports that "[o]verstating a debtor's balance — also called 'overbiffing' — is the latest outrage in unfair debt collection." The article is here.
The Hill reports that Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos was sued Tuesday for allegedly failing to cancel student debt for people whose for-profit colleges have shut down. Last month a court ruled that the Obama-era debt regulations had to be implemented after more than a year of delays by DeVos. Yesterday, however, a California legal […]
The New York Times reports today: The students attended institutions with pragmatic names like the Minnesota School of Business and others whose branding evoked ivy-draped buildings and leafy quads, like Corinthian Colleges. Tens of thousands of them say they are alike in one respect: They were victims of fraud, left with useless degrees and crushing […]
The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California has issued "Procedural Guidance for Class Action Settlements." The guidance addresses items to include in a motion for preliminary approval, suggestions for class notice, and attorney fees. Among other things, the guidelines instruct lawyers to file an accounting of the distribution to the class and […]
The New York Times reports: Across the corporate landscape, the Trump administration has presided over a sharp decline in financial penalties against banks and big companies accused of malfeasance, according to analyses of government data and interviews with more than 60 former and current federal officials. The approach mirrors the administration’s aggressive deregulatory agenda throughout […]
"Wells Fargo & Co will not finish paying back the estimated 600,000 customers it wrongly charged for auto insurance until at least 2020, the bank said in a letter to U.S. lawmakers. … U.S. regulators slapped Wells Fargo with a $1 billion penalty in April when it admitted to wrongly forcing drivers into auto insurance […]
Online student loan refinancer SoFi has agreed to stop misrepresenting how much money student loan borrowers have saved or will save from refinancing their loans with the company, in order to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it deceptively advertised inflated figures for more than two years. In a complaint against Social Finance, Inc. and […]
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau today issued a statement about its plans for its payday-loan regulation: The Bureau expects to issue proposed rules in January 2019 that will reconsider the Bureau's rule regarding Payday, Vehicle Title, and Certain High-Cost Installment Loans and address the rule's compliance date. The Bureau will make final decisions regarding the scope of the […]