A new Federal Trade Commission report to Congress details the consumer issues that affect American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) populations, as well as the FTC’s enforcement, outreach and education work on these issues. The report summarizes the agency’s efforts to hear directly from tribal leaders, community members, advocates, and others about issues affecting their […]
Almost twenty years ago, various groups of merchants filed antitrust litigation against Visa, Mastercard, and banks that serve as payment-card issuers for those networks, tied to the “interchange fees” charged for each transaction. (In full disclosure, I worked on one of the district court cases over a decade ago. I remember close-to-nothing about the case.) […]
Since its 2019 decision in Salcedo v. Hanna, which held that a Telephone Consumer Protection Act plaintiff who received only a single unwanted text message lacked standing to sue because he had not suffered an actual injury, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has been out of step with the other federal […]
James P. Nehf of Indiana has written Fintech, Payday Loans and the Changing Landscape of Cash-Advance Consumer Credit in the United States, 10 Int’l J. Cons. L. & Practice 1 (2022). Here’s the abstract: High-cost, cash-advance or “payday” loans have plagued low-in- come consumers in the United States for several decades. With little regulation at […]
Many of us learned about multlievel-marketing company and purveyor of women’s clothing LuLaRoe in 2021, when dueling documentaries about the company’s rapid growth and decline were released. As featured in those documentaries, the company was the subject of extensive litigation and investigations as to its relationships with its “fashion retailers” — i.e., those recruited to […]
Debt collectors and debt buyers should have basic facts about a consumer debt before contacting consumers or filing lawsuits against them to collect on the debt. But blatantly wrong information about accounts has long been one of the major, persistent problems in debt collection. It appears Visa recently issued a rule that touches on the […]
After years of advocating that forced arbitration provisions that deprive consumers of the option of filing claims in court and bar consumers from pursuing class actions, the Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Legal Reform is now complaining that consumers are using arbitration too much. Reuters’ article on ILR’s shameless report, with a link to the […]
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released today a special edition of its Supervisory Highlights that reports on unlawful junk fees uncovered in deposit accounts and in multiple loan servicing markets, including in mortgage, student, and payday lending. The CFPB explains that “[t]hese unlawful fees corrode family finances, force up families’ banking and borrowing costs, and […]
Michael Blasie of Seattle has written Regulating Plain Language, forthcoming in the Wisconsin Law Review. Here is the abstract: What one scholar coined a “quiet revolution” in consumer contracts has been a half century in the making. And the revolution extends well beyond consumer contracts. Legislatures and regulators passed over seven hundred plain language laws […]
It’s headlined The Dirty Little Secret of Credit Card Rewards Programs, by Chenzi Xu and Jeffrey Reppucci. After referring to a study that found that when rewards go up, so do the fees merchants pay for credit card processing, the op-ed explains: The vast majority of merchants pass these costs on to consumers by charging more for their products […]