This looks like important research bearing on the issue of junk fees, among other things. From the Bureau’s newsroom: Today, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued a new report that suggests consumers tend to pay more for products that have more complex pricing structures. The report is based on experiments with multiple rounds of […]
Category Archives: Unfair & Deceptive Acts & Practices (UDAP), including Discrimination
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has issued a report examining the growth of financial transactions in online video games and virtual worlds. “These platforms increasingly resemble traditional banking and payment systems that facilitate the storage and exchange of billions of dollars in assets, including virtual currencies. However, consumers report being harmed by scams or theft […]
The Federal Trade Commission is sending nearly $62 million in refunds to sellers deceived by advertising and marketing claims made by online real estate business Opendoor Labs, Inc. According to the FTC’s August 2022 complaint, Opendoor cheated home sellers by tricking them into thinking that they could make more money selling their home to Opendoor than […]
Available here, the article explains the history of additional fees added by D.C. restaurants, the rationales given by supporters and defenders, and the status of enforcement and litigation efforts.
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Consumer Law Scholarship, Unfair & Deceptive Acts & Practices (UDAP), including Discrimination
Consumer Finance Monitor Podcast: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Use of Unfairness to Regulate Discriminatory Conduct: A Discussion of the Consumer and Industry Perspectives
Here. I spoke about my recent article, Is Discrimination Unfair?, on the podcast.
I’ve previously posted about consumer lawsuits across the country challenging various aspects of the Multiple Listing Service under unfair competition and antitrust laws. Today, the National Association of Realtors announced it had agreed to a global settlement of these cases. In addition to a payment of $418 million in damages, Realtors have agreed to get […]
On Monday night, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem posted an….unusual video on X (nee Twitter)— a nearly five-minute post extolling the work done by cosmetic dentists at Smile Texas. The tone and content of the video struck many as an advertisement, but nowhere in the post was there an indication it was an ad or […]
Andrea Chandrasekher of UC-Davis has a history of writing important papers on important subjects. She has done so again, with The “Good” Starbucks: Consumer Redlining in Large American Chain Stores. Here’s the abstract: Racial discrimination in the retail realm has been well-documented in the academic literature. However, past studies have focused on retail redlining, a discriminatory […]
. . . at the Consumer Finance Monitor Podcast. The episode also discusses the CFPB and discrimination.
The Federal Trade Commission is taking action against H&R Block, alleging that the tax preparation company unfairly deletes consumers’ tax data and requires them to contact customer service when they downgrade to more affordable online products, and that it has deceptively markets its products as “free” when they were not free for many consumers. The […]