On June 18, 2015, the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) voted 3-2 to approve an order that promises to have major and negative impacts on companies who use modern telephone technology to text and call consumers.
The stark increase in the number of lawsuits that were filed under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”) has been
On June 10, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a final rule defining larger participants of the automobile financing market. The new rule will become effective 60 days after being published in the Federal Register. The final rule follows up the CFPB’s proposed rule, issued on September 17, 2014, on which we previously reported here
Attorneys general from twenty-two states today announced that Classmates, Inc. which runs the website classmates.com, and Florists Transworld Delivery, Inc. and FTD.com, Inc. (collectively, “FTD”) have agreed to settle allegations that the companies were involved in misleading, unfair, and deceptive trade practices. Although FTD and Classmates did not admit to wrongdoing, they agreed to pay
On May 20, the three national consumer reporting agencies (CRAs) – Equifax Information Services LLC, Experian Information Solutions Inc., and TransUnion LLC – inked a deal with thirty-one state attorneys general to end an investigation initiated in 2012 by the Ohio Attorney General’s office.
Under the multistate settlement, which is in the form of
On April 15, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a final rule suspending for one year the requirement under the Truth in Lending Act and implemented by Regulation Z that credit card issuers submit their card agreements to the CFPB on a quarterly basis. The CFPB publishes the agreements to a public database on its
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau recently issued its Winter 2015 Supervisory Highlights report which provides an overview of the supervision work completed by the CFPB from July through December 2014. Matters resolved by the CFPB’s Supervision side are non-public in nature and are resolved, not generally through the payment of large fines and penalties, but
Following up on the failure in 2014 to implement changes to the CFPB through legislative action, on March 5, U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.) reintroduced a package of bills seeking to make changes to the CFPB’s leadership structure, how data is collected from consumers, and more.
Representative Duffy is the Chairman of the House Financial
On February 10, the Department of Justice and the North Carolina Attorney General filed a consent decree to settle claims that a Charlotte-area “buy here pay here” dealer engaged in intentionally discriminatory “reverse redlining” practices. The regulators alleged that the defendants specifically targeted African-American customers and imposed onerous credit terms upon them without regard to
The Federal Trade Commission has released a Staff Report addressing the “Internet of Things” – a phrase referring to everyday items that are able to connect to the internet and transmit data. The Internet of Things includes over 25 billion connected devices worldwide, including fitness trackers, connected appliances, and more. Estimates are that by 2020,
On January 5, the Federal Communications Commission announced that it was creating a new complaint portal. As shown on the FCC form for complaints, which can be found here (Word format) and here (.pdf), this portal is very much designed to capture complaints arising from the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and, specifically, automatic telephone