Here. The staffer, Ronald L. Rubin, has also served as senior counsel to the House Financial Services Committee and as a partner at a big law firm. Excerpts: Nobody should be charged, harassed, or sued for a debt they've already paid or for someone else's debt. However, the CFPB's proposed solution is a hopelessly complex […]
Category Archives: Debt Collection
by Jeff Sovern Consumers have no legal obligation to pay time-barred debts and suing on such a debt or threatening to sue on one violates the FDCPA. But are consumers ever better off, aside from feeling better for meeting their obligations, by paying such debts? When a statute of limitations is less than seven years, as is […]
Here. Excerpt: While ACA maintains that its 3,500 members have "long been committed to making debt collection a more consumer-friendly experience," its idea of friendly stretches credulity. While the consumer bureau has proposed that collectors limit phone attempts to reach debtors to six a week, the ACA's idea was quite different — to limit "collection call attempts to no more […]
Journalist Bob Sullivan emailed Advance Cash Services to elicit a comment on a consumer's story of how she had been dunned for a phantom debt. He didn't get the comment, but the collector sent him an email demanding he repay a payday loan that he never took out, for $935.76. His story is here.
by Jeff Sovern Brian posted this morning on the CFPB's debt collection proposal. I wanted to focus just on the validation requirements. Appendix F to the Bureau's proposal speaks to the validation notice. The Proposal indicates that the Bureau has conducted and continues to conduct extensive consumer testing of validation notices. I don't know what […]
by Jeff Sovern Here. It has more information than the article abstract, but is a lot shorter than the article. The article itself is here. In other debt collection news, Law360.com has its preview of the debt collection rules here (behind paywall). The headline: CFPB Enforcement Actions Could Guide Debt Collection Rules. UPDATE: InsideARM.com reports […]
The American Banker (behind paywall) and Bloomberg report speculations.
by Jeff Sovern We now have reason to believe that validation notices fail to convey to consumers the information Congress wants consumers to have. If the CFPB addresses validation notices in its regulation, courts can simply follow the Bureau's lead. But it could be years before that regulation takes effect. What should courts do in the […]