The DC Attorney General’s Office today announced that “EasyPay Finance (EasyPay), a rent-a-bank lender that had operated in the District, will pay more than $215,000 to resolve allegations that it used predatory practices to deceive hundreds of District residents into paying interest rates significantly above DC’s legally allowed maximum rate. In addition to financial terms, […]
Category Archives: Unfair & Deceptive Acts & Practices (UDAP), including Discrimination
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Consumer Law Scholarship, Federal Trade Commission, U.S. Supreme Court, Unfair & Deceptive Acts & Practices (UDAP), including Discrimination
If the Chamber of Commerce’s claim that discrimination isn’t unfair is correct, why does Student for Fair Admissions have “fair” in its name?
I am working on an article about the CFPB’s determination that discrimination is unfair, a claim that the Chamber of Commerce and banking trade groups are challenging in litigation. Consequently, I am collecting examples in which people used the word “fair” to mean “without discrimination,” or conversely, “unfair” to convey discriminatory conduct. A prominent example […]
Good Jobs First reports that “[o]ver the past two decades, major companies have paid out over $25 billion in damages and settlements in class action and multi-district consumer protection lawsuits filed throughout the United States” concerning overcharging customers for goods and services or engaging in false advertising. Read the details here.
The Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon.com today for allegedly enrolling consumers in Amazon Prime without their consent and knowingly making it difficult for consumers to cancel their Prime subscriptions. The complaint charges that Amazon used manipulative, coercive, or deceptive user-interface designs known as “dark patterns” to trick consumers into enrolling in automatically-renewing Prime subscriptions. The […]
The Federal Trade Commission reported this week on the refunds returned to harmed consumers in 2022 from its cases against bad actors that cheated, deceived, defrauded people out of their money. The agency’s press release also contained a sober message: refunds to consumers are dropping due to AMG Capital Management, LLC v. FTC, a 2021 […]
The phrase “dark patterns” was invented by Harry Brignull and has been defined by the FTC as ““practices that trick or manipulate users into making choices they would not otherwise have made and that may cause harm.” Examples include web sites that makes it easy to purchase an ongoing service but that make it harder […]
“Tipping” and “donating” have taken on a new meaning in high-interest online lending. Earlier this month, California, Connecticut, and the District of Columbia snagged SoLo Funds, Inc., an online lending platform, for deceiving consumers about the true cost of the loans it facilitated. According to the states and DC, the fintech required borrowers to pay […]
The Federal Trade Commission is sending payments totaling more than $557,000 to consumers who paid money to GDP Network, LLC (YF Solution), a Florida-based telemarketing company that promised credit card interest rate reductions and regularly failed to deliver. The FTC and the State of Florida sued GDP Network and its owners in July 2020, alleging […]
In November 2022, the FTC brought a lawsuit against the operators of a telemarketing debt relief scheme based in Tennessee. Operating under a variety of trade names, the network had tricked consumers to part with tens of millions of dollars based on false promises to eliminate or substantially reduce credit card debt. This week, the […]
“Essential oils” have become very popular over the past few years, in part due to confusion that, in this context, “essential” does not mean “indispensable or necessary,” but rather refers to the means by which they are derived from plants. An essential oil company called Young Living had marketed its products as being “therapeutic-grade,” and […]