March 2-8 is National Consumer Protection Week (NCPW). NCPW is a campaign of a group of non-profit organizations (including AARP and Consumers Union) and federal and state government entities (including the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau), aimed at helping consumer to “take advantage of their consumer rights and make better-informed decisions.” […]
The National Center for Access to Justice has released the "Access to Justice Index," an online resource presenting data on the "performance of state-based justice systems in assuring access to justice." Going state by state, the index looks at four elements of state-based justice systems: • the number of civil legal aid attorneys serving the […]
Adam J. Levitin of Georgetown and Janneke Ratcliffe the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Center for Community Capital have written Rethinking Duties to Serve in Housing Finance, in Homeownership Built to Last: Lessons from the Housing Crisis on Sustaining Homeownership for Low-Income and Minority Families (Brookings 2014). Here is the abstract: In this […]
Susanna Montezemolo of the Center for Responsible Lending haas written Car-Title Lending. Here is the abstract: Provides an overview of car-title lending and its impact on U.S. households. Car-title lending — making expensive loans secured by the title of a vehicle a borrower owns outright — has become a multi-billion dollar industry in the U.S. […]
Here, in the Boston Fed's quarterly newsletter. Excerpt: The problems inherent to the business model are most starkly exposed in the context of lawsuits filed by debt buyers. On the one hand, the debt buyer acknowledges in the forward-flow agreement that the data it received from the bank is limited and potentially inaccurate, with frequent […]
by Jeff Sovern The CFPB announced yesterday that the big three credit bureaus have added a function to their web sites to enable consumers to upload documents supporting claims of errors–police reports, copies of correspondence, etc–in credit reports. That shouldn't be a big deal in 2014, but in the world of credit bureaus, where the […]
Here. Excerpts from PIRG's news release: Debt collectors trying to collect debt from the wrong person were the top source of complaints to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), according to a report released today by the U.S. PIRG Education Fund. The report also found that debt collection, the newest category in the database, is […]
Here. The top 10 complaint categories include: Category Number of Complaints Percentages Identity Theft 290,056 14% Debt Collection 204,644 10% Banks and Lenders 152,707 7% Imposter Scams 121,720 6% Telephone and Mobile Services 116,261 6% Prizes, Sweepstakes, and Lotteries 89,944 4% Auto Related Complaints 82,701 4% Shop-at-Home and Catalog Sales 66,024 3% Television and Electronic […]
Despite her history of backing measures on the leading edge of the conservative agenda (such as the controversial immigration law S.B. 1070, later invalidated in part by the Supreme Court), Arizona's Republican Governor Jan Brewer yesterday vetoed a bill that would have permitted discrimination against LGBT customers by business owners who cited religious reasons for […]
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced yesterday that it has sued ITT Educational Services, Inc., accusing the for-profit college chain of predatory student lending. We believe that ITT used high-pressure tactics to push many students into expensive private student loans that were likely to end in default. This is our first public enforcement action against […]