Consumer Law & Policy Blog

Wyoming Consumer Issues Conference: Unlocking the Digital Marketplace: Legal and Ethical Issues

The 10th Consumer Issues Conference will be held on September 30 and October 1 with the theme of Unlocking the Digital Marketplace: Legal and Ethical Issues. The location will be the UW Union on the campus of the University of Wyoming. The conference features speakers and workshops on selling, shopping and participating in the online world. Up to 8 CLE credits available.

The digital marketplace is becoming more pervasive but raises some special issues for consumers, including privacy of personal information, commercialization of social communications, fraud, and even criminal issues. At the same time, the digital marketplace can be a boon for entrepreneurs and job seekers, if used properly. This conference will bring to the forefront the ethical and legal issues associated with the digital marketplace in ways that can be used by consumers, businesses, attorneys  and policy makers.

This year’s keynote speaker will be Professor Patrick Murphy, Marketing Ethics Professor from Notre Dame University. He will speak on Ethical Issues for Marketers and Consumers in the Online World. Also speaking will be Susan Linn, an author and psychologist who will present her documentary film Consuming Kids: The Hostile Takeover of Childhood, as well as giving a plenary speech on Reclaiming Childhood from Corporate Marketers & Media Moguls. UW Communications Professor George Gladney will be joined by his colleague Professor Frank Millar for a closing plenary entitled Enduring Issues in Communication and Cyberspace.

The New Credit Card Law Hits College Campuses

Today's Washington Post explains here that credit card reform is hitting college campuses. As we have discussed, the 2009 credit card reform legislation imposes restrictions on the marketing of credit cards to adults between ages 18 and 21, which is unusual, given that the law generally treats adults alike. Title III of the new legislation (sections 301 to 305) bars providing a credit card to a person under 21 unless that person has an adult co-signer willing to assume liability for debts incurred on the card or can independently meet certain income requirements. In addition, colleges are prohibited from offering students gifts as inducements to apply for credit. The schools must also disclose their financial relationships with credit card issuers. The Post article suggests that the legislation has changed industry practices; for example, Bank of America had ended on-campus marketing altogether.

Jeff Gelles Column: How the Pew Trusts Aided Credit Card Reform

Here.  A story about how individual credit card issuers refused to act until all were forced to, and how regulation could help when the market failed.

NCLC Updates

This is an unusually packed update with lots of important info--please read to the end!

1.  NCLC analysis of many little-known, key consumer law changes created by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act is found at www.nclc.org/dodd-frank.

2.  Three new NCLC treatise revisions:  Foreclosures (1146 pp.), Consumer Class Actions (1026 pp.), and Consumer Warranty Law (1136).The Foreclosures volume in particular is an absolute must today.  Also just released are SEVEN 2010 supplements:Fair Debt Collection (454 pp.), Collection Actions (236 pp.), Cost of Credit (188 pp.), Credit Discrimination (160 pp.), Automobile Fraud (218 pp), Consumer Banking and Payment Law (222 pp.),and Access to Utility Service (238 pp.). Continued subscription includes free access to updated companion websites. Automatic subscribers have received their updates by now.  Others can order by going to www.consumerlaw.org/shop or by calling 617-542-9595.

3.  Free Webinars: September 15 at 2pm on the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and September 16 at 2pm on consumer auto issues . Contact jhiemenz@nclc.org for this and future webinars.   

Go to http://www.nclc.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=85&Itemid=101 for the 2010 schedule of each webinar series and FREE downloads of  PAST webinars

4.  The July/August NCLC REPORTS are in the mail :   

Bankruptcy and Foreclosures Edition covers 50 HAMP practice pointers and the new bankruptcy rules

Debt Collection & Repo Edition examines new FDCPA rulemaking, new FTC debt settlement rule, mortgage workout letters must comply with FDCPA, threatening to sue without license violates FDCPA, FTC report on debt collection suits

Consumer Credit & Usury Ed. and Deceptive Practices & Warranties Ed. on Dodd-Frank are now on-line at www.nclc.org/dodd-frank  (This is a special exception to the rule that NCLC REPORTS are ONLY available in hard copy)

 

5.  Online registration and brochure for the Consumer Rights Litigation Conference now available at www.nclc.org -- This is the consumer law highlight of the year,  Nov. 11-14, 2010, at the Park Plaza Hotel,  Boston, with over 50 breakout sessions, a Consumer Class Action Symposium, and intensives on mortgage litigation, debt collection defense, and bankruptcy protection for homeowners.  Join over 700 colleagues and fabulous speakers. CLE credit. Early registration ends September 10th.  

The Content of Consumer Law Classes II

Want to know what consumer law professors cover in class?  Read The Content of Consumer Law Classes, forthcoming in the Journal of Consumer and Commercial Law.  Here's the abstract

This paper reports on a 2010 survey of law professors teaching consumer protection, and follows up on a similar 2008 survey, which appeared in Jeff Sovern, The Content of Consumer Law Classes, 12 J. Consumer & Commercial L. 48 (No. 1, 2008), available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1139894. The 2010 survey found more uniformity in topic selection than the 2008 survey. All thirteen professors who taught survey courses reported that they taught common law fraud, UDAP statutes, the Truth in Lending Act, and the Fair Credit Reporting Act, while all but one covered the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the Federal Trade Commission Act, and payday lending. In contrast, in 2008 no topics were explored by all the survey professors and three were discussed by all but one. Nevertheless, as in the 2008 survey, the professors varied considerably in selecting other topics. Professors responding to the 2010 survey reported keeping their syllabi current; for example, more than half the professors teaching survey courses covered the Credit CARD Act, enacted only a year before the survey was conducted, while all but two addressed the subprime crisis.

Confessions of Former Debt Collectors

The CNNMoney website has a fascinating collection of accounts by former debt collectors, describing what they thought of the job (most but not all of them hated it) and why they left it.  Here are a few excerpts:

• I was absolutely ruthless when I first started out as a debt collector. I had a black heart. If someone told me they only had $150 to their name this month and needed to feed their entire family of five, I would say, "I don't care, this is your fault and you owe the money. Pay it." I would even use blind threats like, "I know where you work" to intimidate them.

• Collectors I knew regularly held contests to see who could make the most people cry in one day.  A co-worker at my office overheard another collecting agent telling a debtor in Spanish that she was going to send someone over to his house to beat him with a tire iron, because she didn't think anyone in the office would understand her. You'd be surprised what goes on behind closed doors. Every day, you were asked to break the law. If you didn't break the law, you were asked what was wrong with you.

• One of the guys in a nearby cubicle called up debtors and posed as a legal counsel. He would tell them to raise their right hand and promise to tell the truth, and then he would drill them with personal questions and badger them, saying throughout the conversation, "Do you still have your right hand raised? You do realize you're under oath, right?" He could get away with things like this because most consumers just don't know their rights.

• Unlike some of the other collectors I knew, I didn't try to scare people or take advantage of peoples' ignorance by threatening things like eviction even though we weren't allowed to evict someone. But it was still tough to deal with people who are struggling so much, and it was even harder knowing that a lot of people aren't telling you the truth.

• When I started my own collection agency and we had our first big customer, I needed to hire 30 collectors. I posted one job opening and had 400 to 500 people apply. As soon as I told them we did drug screening and background checks, the pool went to less than a hundred people. This just shows how much the industry needs to change.

Call for Papers/Roundtable Participants for AALS Meeting Panel on Credit CARD Act

The AALS Section on Commercial and Related Consumer Law is seeking participants for a roundtable discussion at the AALS Annual Meeting and is also separately soliciting essays for a print symposium to follow.

The topic of both the roundtable discussion and the print symposium will be the federal Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009 (commonly known as the CARD Act).   In this Act, Congress limited the use of some common practices by credit card issuers and mandated additional disclosures.  For example, card issuers now must give cardholders 45-days notice before increasing interest rates and fees, the increases can apply only to new charges, and the cardholder must be given the option to cancel the card before the increases take effect.  In addition, card issuers generally cannot increase rates for the first 12 months after an account is opened.  Credit card bills must include information about how long it will take to pay off balances, and various restrictions apply to when card issuers can make payments due. 

This new Act raises many new questions.   How have the new regulations affected credit contracts and practices since their enactment?  Will card issuers find ways around the legislation?  Will the restrictions reduce the availability of credit and, if so, is that a good or bad result?  Will the CARD Act's increased disclosure and opt-in provisions advance or hinder consumer protections?   If these restrictions are what consumers want, why did the market not provide them?  Will further reform be necessary?

The $20 Billion BP Oil Spill Fund and the Civil Justice System

According to this article in today's New York Times . . .

People and businesses seeking a lump-sum settlement from BP's $20 billion oil spill compensation fund will most likely have to waive their right to sue not only BP, but also all the other major defendants involved with the spill, according to internal documents from the lawyers handling the fund.

Implications of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act for Consumer Law Practice

The National Consumer Law Center has released an eight-page summary of the Dodd-Frank Act's implications for consumer law practice, covering changes to TILA and RESPA, foreclosure-prevention measures, and preemption, among other things.  Read it here.  NCLC is also presenting a webinar on the subject on September 15 at 2pm EST.

Is Mandatory Consumer Arbitration Dying?

U.S. PIRG's Consumer Blog reports on this story from Money Talk News suggesting that mandatory consumer arbitration is on its way out. It notes, for instance, that the recently-enacted federal financial reform legislation empowers the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to limit or ban mandatory arbitration in contracts for consumer financial products and services. The Money Talk News story caught my eye because of the example it used to illustrate why mandatory consumer arbitration is unfair:

Just last week Wells Fargo was ordered to pay $200 million in connection with this class action suit that accused it of deliberately rearranging customer checks and account debits to maximize overdraft charges. What Wells Fargo was doing – and many banks still are doing – is clearing big checks first, which may reduce a checking account to zero, then clearing the smaller checks and debit charges made on the same day. Here’s how that would maximize their  overdraft charges: Say you have $2,000 in your checking account. You use your debit card to make ten $10 purchases. Then you write a check to buy something that costs $2000. What should happen is the ten $10 purchases would clear, but the $2,000 check would bounce, resulting in a $30 bounced check fee. Common industry practice, however, is to re-order the debits: clear the $2,000 check first, leaving the account with a zero balance. Then bounce the ten $10 purchases, resulting in $300 of bounced check fees. Think that’s fair? It’s been going on for years. Would going to arbitration with Wells Fargo over $300 in fees have changed anything? No. Would hundreds of people banding together and costing Wells Fargo $200 million dollars change their behavior? Quite possibly. (In this specific case, however, not yet – Wells is appealing the judge’s ruling.)