Banks and credit unions may give their customers the option of overdraft "protection," which allows the customer to overdraw when (for instance) using a debit card in exchange for paying a overdraft fee. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is concerned that the fees can burden consumers and wants to ensure that overdraft fees are adequately […]
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The Washington Post reports: The heat on Wells Fargo over its auto lending business has intensified, with customers filing at least three lawsuits, politicians calling for hearings and a bank regulator issuing a subpoena for records. Wells Fargo, still trying to recover from a fake accounts scandal, said last week that roughly 570,000 customers were […]
Lots of editorials and op-eds on consumer issues lately. In The Hill today: Congress this summer is considering whether to pass legislation that would fundamentally damage the ability of the Federal Trade Commission to protect consumers from pyramid schemes. As one of the commissioners of the FTC, I have a much different view. Americans lose […]
The Chicago Sun-Times urges "Congress should side with consumers, not with what it says in the fine print, and abandon its efforts to repeal the rule." Fine print has never been the friend of consumers, and in recent years the perils have escalated as financial institutions have drawn up clauses that deny customers effective redress […]
The New York Times reports that the Food and Drug Administration has warned Congress that it is frequently finding contamination, illegal ingredients and other problems in the soaring quantities of imported cosmetics, and that it has limited resources to inspect the shipments. The warning was part of a letter sent in late June to a […]
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau today issued a bulletin warning companies about tricking consumers into expensive pay-by-phone fees. The CFPB is concerned about companies potentially misleading consumers about the purpose and amount of certain pay-by-phone fees or keeping them in the dark about much cheaper payment options. The bulletin also reviews guidelines to help consumer […]
Here. The first three paragraphs read: The early results from a recent study that Kent Grayson, a Northwestern University marketing professor, did on consumer skepticism left him feeling a little, well, skeptical. So he ran the trials a few more times. Each time, when participants were asked what they thought of modern advertising techniques, they […]
Former Trump campaign head Corey Lewandowski went on Meet the Press today. The host of the show, Chuck Todd, was questioning Lewandowski on the same things everyone else on the Sunday shows had been talking about: the failure of the republican controlled Congress to repeal the ACA, chaos and personnel turnover in the White House, the […]
A coalition of 20 Attorneys General sent a letter today urging U.S. Senate leaders not to repeal the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Arbitration Rule, which stops companies from forcing consumers to sign away their legal rights. The press release of the Massachusetts Attorney General explains: The House recently passed a Joint Resolution of Disapproval that […]
As we reported at the time, here, in 2015 the Second Circuit held that the National Bank Act, which preempts state usury laws regulating the interest a national bank may charge on a loan, does not preempt state usury law after the national bank has sold or otherwise assigned the loan to a company that […]