The Federal Trade Commission this week sued fitness operators Fitness International LLC and Fitness & Sports Clubs, LLC for using cancellation procedures that made it difficult for consumers to unsubscribe from their monthly memberships. The complaint alleges that the gyms’ practices have incurred hundreds of millions of dollars in unwanted recurring charges. According to the […]
Category Archives: Unfair & Deceptive Acts & Practices (UDAP), including Discrimination
Over at the Consumer Finance Monitor blog, Alan Kaplinsky has questioned the legal authority for President Trump’s Executive Order barring so-called debanking; that is, when banks close bank accounts based on someone’s political views. The blog post argues that to the extent that the EO is based on the CFPB’s and FTC’s unfairness powers, it […]
The National Credit Union Administration has promulgated regulations regarding the applicability of state laws to federal credit unions, including 12 C.F.R. s. 701.35(c), which, after setting out how a federal credit union may may determine the types of fees affecting the maintenance of its accounts, provides: “State laws regulating such activities are not applicable to […]
The article, Companies use this sneaky pricing trick to overcharge you. One lawmaker wants it banned, is by K.R. Callaway. Excerpt: Last year, the FTC launched an investigation into surveillance pricing, hoping to learn more about how companies were using personal data to change prices. The initial results, released in January, found that retailers were using everything from demographic […]
The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday nullified the Federal Trade Commission’s Click-to-Cancel rule. The rule addressed unfair and deceptive practices in subscriptions (or negative options marketing). The FTC aimed to remove misrepresentations in subscription practices and to generally make canceling subscriptions as easy as it is to sign up for them. In reversing the […]
Seth Frotman & Tara Mikkilineni have written The Trump Administration Wants to Reboot Redlining at the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology’s Jolt Digest. Here’s an excerpt: [T] he Vought CFPB[] . . . . has quietly made a series of moves that would enable an unholy alliance of Big Tech and financial institutions to digitally […]
Here in the American Banker (behind a paywall but should be available on Lexis). The article includes some troubling observations, including that despite a Paoletta memo claiming that the Bureau under Trump will focus on consumer fraud, the dismissed cases include at least one case involving deceptive marketing. The article does mention some cases that […]
Consumer Bankers Association so reports here. The dismissal is with prejudice. For a critique of the district court opinion holding that discrimination is not unfair, go here.
The stipulation of dismissal is here. Here’s some of what the Bureau had said earlier about the case: The Bureau alleges that SoLo’s advertisements and loan disclosures tout no-interest loans when, in fact, virtually all loans on the SoLo Platform include a lender “tip” that goes to the lender, a SoLo “donation” that goes to […]