People Come First At Our Consumer Rights Law Firm
Last week’s blogs discussed the importance of your credit score and explained how it is calculated. See blog. This week’s blog will give you some tips to improve your score, but there is no quick fix, as restoring your credit takes time and patience. When taking steps to improve your score, first, you need to check your report. If you…
While the Federal Government continues to crack down on abusive debt collection tactics the City of Chicago takes its own stance on the industry. The City recently passed a new ordinance governing collector conduct within its city limits, which takes effect July 1, 2013. This new ordinance requires collectors attempting to collect consumer debts from Chicago residents to be licensed…
The Equal Credit Opportunity Act (“ECOA”) 15 U.S.C. § 1691 et seq. is a United States law enacted in 1974, that makes it illegal for a creditor to discriminate against a credit applicant on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, age or because you receive public assistance. The ECOA applies to any person who, in…
We recently wrote a blog on how certain companies do not fall within the definition of a “debt collector” under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. Click here. If a person or business is not a debt collector under the FDCPA, then regardless of how despicable the conduct, they are not liable to the consumer under that law. Another such way…
Most debt collection comes to us in the form of phone call campaigns, letter writing, credit reporting, and lawsuits. The collectors are obviously the agencies and lawyers that pursue the debts by these means. However, many people find themselves subject to other collection abuses – such has aggressive and nasty process servers and repo men. To most, this is some…
Many people contact us to complain that they are getting a high volume of calls from a collector, and they believe it is harassment. The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act states that a collector may not cause a telephone to ring repeatedly with the intent to harass, annoy or abuse the person at the called number. (15 U.S.C. 1692d(5)). When…
We came across a question to one of the many consumer question boards that asked: What kind of scam is going on with these calls where they mention a name then tell you to hang up if you are not this person? What do they do if you don’t hang up but instead stay on the line for the whole…
In this day and age, most everyone has a cell phone. In fact, many people have replaced their home phones with a cell phone. Most people who have a cell phone has received a call from a “Robo” dialer at some point or another. It is quite typical for calls to be made by collectors or telemarketers utilizing an automated…
When it comes to credit reporting agencies, we have all heard of the main three, Trans Union, Equifax and Experian. A majority of the credit transactions that take place in this country utilize one of these three for their credit information on the consumer applying for credit. But there are so many more. As we have written in our blog,…
When we hear the term credit reporting agency, we think of Trans Union, Equifax and Experian, and the reporting of our payment histories. The Fair Credit Reporting Act provides consumers a number of rights when it comes to dealing with a credit reporting agency. We enjoy rights such as the right to obtain a copy of our credit report for…