In a case under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held today that the owner and subscriber of a phone with a number listed on the Do-Not-Call Registry suffers an injury sufficient to confer standing when unsolicited telemarketing calls or texts are sent to the number in violation of the […]
Author Archives: Allison Zieve
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has three advisory committees — the Consumer Advisory Board, the Community Bank Advisory Council, the Credit Union Advisory Council, and the Academic Research Council –that provide the CFPB with information about emerging trends and practices in the consumer financial marketplace. The CFPB is looking for applicants for the committees, including […]
The Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon.com today for allegedly enrolling consumers in Amazon Prime without their consent and knowingly making it difficult for consumers to cancel their Prime subscriptions. The complaint charges that Amazon used manipulative, coercive, or deceptive user-interface designs known as “dark patterns” to trick consumers into enrolling in automatically-renewing Prime subscriptions. The […]
The Guardian reports: “In 1953, a paper developed for cigarette maker RJ Reynolds detailed possible cancer-causing agents in tobacco, but the document would remain hidden from public view for decades. In the interim, the industry told the public: ‘We don’t accept the idea that there are harmful agents in tobacco.’ The chemical industry, it seemed, […]
An op-ed by Sierra Club’s Jessica Tritsch’s starts: “A reasonable person would think that reducing strain on our energy infrastructure, bringing down consumer utility bills and protecting the health of kids would be issues that had bipartisan support, yet Congress is considering a pair of bills that would ensure the opposite. The so-called Save Our Gas […]
The Center for Justice and Democracy has issued a report titled “Nuclear Fizzle: How Jury Grievance Reports Whitewash Corporate Misconduct and Dehumanize Victims.” Here is the brief summary: “Corporate lobby groups are issuing reports criticizing juries when their large corporate members lose cases (which we call “jury grievance reports”). Their focus is on what they […]
I came across this Federal Trade Commission s interactive dashboard for refund data, which gives a state-by-state breakdown of refunds in FTC cases. Clicking on the “refunds by date” tab shows that 1.9 million people cashed refunds totaling more than $392 million in 2022.
The Federal Trade Commission is sending payments totaling more than $557,000 to consumers who paid money to GDP Network, LLC (YF Solution), a Florida-based telemarketing company that promised credit card interest rate reductions and regularly failed to deliver. The FTC and the State of Florida sued GDP Network and its owners in July 2020, alleging […]
In the payday lending industry’s case challenging the CFPB’s funding as unconstitutional, the agency’s opening brief in the Supreme Court and the many amicus briefs in support of the agency have been filed. You can read all of them on the Court’s website, here. Public Citizen’s amicus brief is also posted on our website, here.
The Federal Trade Commission has stopped a pair of student loan debt relief schemes that it says bilked students out of approximately $12 million by using deceptive claims about repayment programs and loan forgiveness that did not exist. The agency also says the companies falsely claimed to be or be affiliated with the Department of […]