Pamela Foohey, Dalié Jiménez, & Christopher K. Odinet have written CARES Act Gimmicks, How Not to Give People Money During a Pandemic and What to Do Instead, online at the Illinois Law Review. Excerpt (footnotes omitted): As a short term solution, money equivalents should have begun with an immediate nationwide eviction and foreclosure moratorium, accompanied by a debt […]
Category Archives: Debt Collection
by Jeff Sovern In an April 16 letter, ACA International, which describes itself as "The Association of Credit and Collection Professionals," complained that "Advocacy organizations have made several recent claims that, 'debt collectors are eager to garnish [stimulus] payments – threatening families’ access to food, shelter, and medicine, and endangering public health.'” I'm not sure […]
by Jeff Sovern The coronavirus is already having an impact on consumers and consumer protection. Some initial observations: The FTC and FDA have sent warning letters to companies reportedly making deceptive or unsupported claims about their products' ability to treat the coronanvirus. It's good that they're on the job. There have been reports of discrimination against Asians […]
by Jeff Sovern The CFPB recently proposed various disclosures to include on validation notices pertaining to time-barred debt. Before doing so, the Bureau retained ICF International to test the notices empirically; this testing found that the notices enabled many respondents to better understand certain rights as to time-barred debt. So far, so good. But the […]
Here. Excerpt: Across Utah, high-interest lenders filed 66% of all small claims cases heard between September 2017 and September 2018, according to a new analysis of court records conducted by a team led by Christopher Peterson, a law professor at the University of Utah and the financial services director at the Consumer Federation of America, […]
Jessica LaVoice and Domonkos F. Vamossy, both of the University of Pittsburgh's Department of Economics, have written Racial Disparities in Debt Collection. Here is the abstract: A distinct set of disadvantages experienced by black Americans increases their likelihood of experiencing negative financial shocks, decreases their ability to mitigate the impact of such shocks, and ultimately […]
. . . should get in touch with @daliejimenez.
by Jeff Sovern Section 1692g(a)(4) requires debt collectors to send consumers a "a statement that if the consumer notifies the debt collector in writing within the thirty-day period that the debt, or any portion thereof, is disputed, the debt collector will obtain verification of the debt or a copy of a judgment against the consumer and a copy of such verification or judgment will be mailed to the consumer by the debt collector . […]
by Jeff Sovern Link here Excerpt: [T]the bureau proposal would invade consumer privacy by allowing collectors to bombard consumers with demands for payment. Under the proposal, debt collectors could try the consumer’s phone number seven times a week and leave voicemails each time. That may not sound too bad, but the CFPB reports that nearly […]
by Jeff Sovern The more I think about the CFPB's recent proposal to allow debt collectors to leave limited-content messages over the phone, the more I think the proposal has real problems. The proposal would allow debt collectors to leave voicemails or oral messages with whomever answered the phone. To qualify as a limited-content message, […]