Manufacturers of home appliances (like Whirlpool) have been sued for misusing the EPA's "Energy Star" label to suggest that products were more energy efficient than they actually were. The industry response has been to try to get Congress to ban such suits. This quote from Shannon Baker-Branstetter of Consumers Union (the publisher of Consumer Reports) […]
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The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been taking consumer complaints on a wide range of topics for some time now, including mortgage lending, credit reporting, private students, and (more recently) debt collection. The agency announced today that it is now taking complaints concerning prepaid cards and other nonbank products. Here is the agency's press release: […]
We have been providing reports (go, for instance, here) of evidence that the number of Americans lacking health insurance has been dropping as the Affordable Care Act goes into effect. Here is the latest: State insurance officials [in Washington state] say fewer than 9 percent of Washington residents still don't have health insurance. That's a significant […]
Is off-label drug promotion–promotion of drugs for uses other than those approved by the FDA — good, bad, or something in between? What can the FDA do to curb off-label promotion by drug sellers consistent with the First Amendment? Law professors Stephanie Greene and Lars Noah have recently debated the issue in writing in Off-Label […]
Professors Eric Fink and Roland Zullo have written Federal Student Loan Servicing: Contract Problems and Public Solutions Here is the abstract: One consequence of the 2007-2008 financial crisis was an abrupt shift from bank-based to direct federal student loans. This momentous change required the Department of Education to rapidly establish the capacity to service loans, […]
Ars Technica reported recently that Chief Judge Marsha Pechman of the Western District of Washington had ordered the identification ("unmasking") of hundreds of Amazon users who posted comments critical of the "nutritional supplements" sold by the company “Ubervita.” The article was completely accurate but the headline was somewhat overstated – Judge Pechman had only authorized […]
The CFPB’s Consumer Complaint Database is a publicly accessible, online database of consumer financial complaints. It includes anonymous information about the complaints received, including the date of submission, the consumer’s zip code, the relevant company, the product type, the issue the consumer is complaining about, and the company’s response. Although when a consumer enters information […]
In March 2013, the Department of Justice revealed that it was working with banking regulators to prevent fraudsters from accessing consumer bank accounts by choking off their access to electronic payments. DOJ calls the program "Operation Choke Point." See prior blog posts here and here. The Operation has come under attack from Republicans in Congress […]
That's the title of this piece by Steven Davidoff Simon. The piece describes how the American Apparel company hid sexual harrasment through a pre-dispute mandatory arbitration clause that it forced on its employees. Hat tip to Paul Bland.
As Bloomberg reports today, Citigroup Inc. agreed to pay $7 billion in fines and consumer relief to resolve government claims that it misled investors about the quality of mortgage-backed bonds sold before the 2008 financial crisis. But is it enough? The Bloomberg article goes on to quote Eric Holder praising the agreement: “The bank’s misconduct […]