On September 21, the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island held that an out-of-state debt collector did not violate the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act when it called the debtor using two phone numbers with a local area code.

In Bien v. Stellar Recovery, Inc., Plaintiff argued that Stellar’s practice

The House Financial Services Committee is expected to vote Wednesday on bills to replace the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s sole director with a bipartisan, five-member commission (H.R. 1266) and require Senate confirmation for the CFPB’s inspector general (H.R. 957).

As we discussed here, The Financial Product Safety Commission Act (H.R. 1266), introduced on March

At 10:00 a.m. EDT on September 29, Richard Cordray, Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, will testify at a House Financial Services Committee hearing to present the CFPB’s latest semi-annual report.

Cordray last appeared before this House committee in March 2015.  During that hearing, U.S. Rep. Randy Neugebauer announced the introduction of a bill

Complaints to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau filed against debt collectors declined ten percent from July to August 2015, according to the latest debt collection litigation and complaint statistics report from WebRecon.  There were 3,432 complaints in August – down from 3,812 in July.  834 different debt collectors were implicated by the complaints.  According

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has announced that it will be holding a field hearing on arbitration in Denver, Colorado on Wednesday, October 7 at 11:00 a.m. MDT.   

The CFPB’s March 10, 2015 Consumer Arbitration Study has come under scrutiny from the financial services industry.  Many believe the CFPB has already concluded that there are

On September 18, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced the appointment of new members to the Consumer Advisory Board, Community Bank Advisory Council, and Credit Union Advisory Council.

“These advisory bodies play a crucial role in ensuring that the Bureau is addressing the wide variety of perspectives in the consumer financial marketplace,” said CFPB Director

The Better Business Bureau recently released data from 2014 regarding the number of complaints received pertaining to registered debt collection agencies.  The statistics show a sharp decrease in the number of complaints lodged against debt collection agencies.  This number is contrary to data released by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which show an increase in

In response to the CFPB’s request for information (RFI) regarding “best practices” for normalizing the data in the Consumer Complaint Database, issued on June 30, 2015, the American Bankers Association (ABA) submitted a comment letter that argues any efforts made by the CFPB to “normalize” data in its consumer complaints database – that is,

On August 28, the Federal Communications Commission issued a declaratory ruling holding that electronic faxes or “e-faxes” are covered by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and the Junk Fax Protection Act.  E-faxes are communications that originate as a fax, but are converted to electronic files during transmission and received as attachments to emails.  This ruling

On August 4, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois held that legal pleadings can violate the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.

In Marquez, et al. v. Weinstein, Pinson, P.S., et al., the plaintiffs argued that a law firm and its client violated § 1692e of the FDCPA by including