by Jeff Sovern The report, by Syed Ejaz, is titled A Broken System: How The Credit Reporting System Fails Consumers And What To Do About It. Here are excerpts from the Executive Summary: Consumers are finding errors on their credit reports. More than one-third (34 percent) of consumers who participated in CR’s Credit Checkup survey […]
Oren Bar-Gill of Harvard and Omri Ben-Shahar of Chicago have written Manipulation by Mislaid Priorities. Here is the abstract: This paper lays a foundation for a new theory of manipulation, based on the misprioritization of (truthful) information. Since consumers review only a subset of all available information, firms can harm consumers by prioritizing information that maximizes […]
Countering assertions that student-loan forgiveness would primarily benefit wealthy people, a new study from the Roosevelt Institute determined that "student debt cancellation would provide more benefits to those with fewer economic resources and could play a critical role in addressing the racial wealth gap and building the Black middle class." The study, titled “Student Debt […]
by Jeff Sovern The report is titled Where White Men Rule: How the Secretive System of Forced Arbitration Hurts Women and Minorities. CNBC has a story here. Here's an excerpt from the report: Arbitrators in consumer and employment cases are mostly male and overwhelmingly white. At AAA and JAMS, the two largest consumer and employment […]
Use of automatic subscriptions has exploded in recent years. Some companies make it easy to sign up but very difficult to cancel, and consumer complaints have piled up. The Washington Post reports, here, that the Federal Trade Commission is looking at ways to make it harder for companies to trap consumers in monthly subscription.
Recently, the blog posted two items (here and here) arguing that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau should issue a rule barring the use of arbitration clauses unless consumers opt in to them. The second item was in reply to Mark Levin's blog post at Ballard Spahr's Consumer Finance Monitor blog response to our first blog […]
by Paul Alan Levy Civil rights activists in Cobb County, Georgia, have been urging members of the community to come in force to the impending school board meeting on June Tenth to celebrate Juneteenth by signing up to speak in support of minority members of the school board, who have been under fire recently. Somebody […]
The Federal Trade Commission staff has provided its 2020 Annual Financial Acts Enforcement Report to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on its enforcement and related activities regarding the Truth in Lending Act, Consumer Leasing Act, and Electronic Fund Transfer Act. The report highlights the FTC’s enforcement actions related to automobile purchases and financing, payday lending, […]
by Jeff Sovern Last week, I suggested that the CFPB adopt a new arbitration rule. Yesterday, Ballard Spahr's Mark Levin commented on my proposal, in a blog post titled Professor Sovern’s opt-in arbitration proposal is neither new nor supportable. This post responds to some of Mr. Levin's arguments. Mr. Levin wrote that my suggestion would […]
Here. Excerpt: * * With no announcement, the company recently changed its terms of service to allow customers to file lawsuits. Already, it faces at least three proposed class actions, including one brought May 18 alleging the company’s Alexa-powered Echo devices recorded people without permission. The retail giant made the change after plaintiffs’ lawyers flooded […]