In a lengthy article today, the Detroit Free Press reports: Ford Motor Co. knowingly launched two low-priced, fuel-efficient cars with defective transmissions and continued selling the troubled Focus and Fiesta despite thousands of complaints and an avalanche of repairs, a Free Press investigation found. The cars, many of which randomly lose power on freeways and have […]
On Tuesday, AT&T became the first major US wireless company to automatically block robocalls for its customers. The free service comes after a June ruling by the Federal Communications Commission that allows phone service providers to offer call-blocking on an opt-out basis. CNN has the story, here.
Under the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 (FACTA), retailers are prohibited from printing more than the last 5 digits of a credit card number or the expiration date on a purchase receipt. The law was enacted to combat identity theft, because receipts other could provide criminals with easy access to credit and […]
Our readers will want to read the Ninth Circuit's decision in Blair v. Rent-A-Center, written by Circuit Judge William Fletcher. Judge Fletcher's intro paragraph sums up the decision nicely: In McGill v. Citibank, N.A., 393 P.3d 85 (Cal. 2017), the California Supreme Court decided that a contractual agreement purporting to waive a party’s right to […]
Following up on our post a few days ago about the petition by #REPRESENT asking the Federal Trade Commission to investigate "surveillance scoring" — where retailers use consumer information collected by data brokers to figure out how much to charge individual customers. Go here to read #REPRESENT's press release. And go here, here, and here […]
Yesterday, a unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit issued an opinion in Nelson v. Great Lakes Educational Loan Services, Inc. in which it concluded that the federal Higher Education Act (HEA) does not preempt state law claims against student loan servicers. The case involves a student loan borrower who brought a […]
The question presented in this brand-new cert petition is Whether the vesting of substantial executive authority in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an independent agency led by a single director, violates the separation of powers.
Various consumer and health groups – including the Consumer Federation of America, the American Institute for Cancer Research, the American Public Health Association, Breast Cancer Action, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, and the U.S. Alcohol Policy Alliance — have called for the following warning on alcohol beverage labels: GOVERNMENT WARNING: According to […]
On Tuesday, seven borrowers sued Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and the Department of Education after the agency failed to take action on their applications for relief from student loans. Under a 1995 law, the Department has authority to forgive the federal debt of students whose colleges defrauded them. The agency, however, has not approved or […]
A consumer-advocacy group as asking the Federal Trade Commission to investigate a practice where retailers use consumer information collected by data brokers to decide how much to charge individual customers. According to the petition submitted to the FTC by #REPRESENT, part of the Consumer Education Foundation, "[m]ajor American corporations, including online and retail businesses, employers […]