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State Shuts Down Collection Agency; Warns Other Debt Collectors on Payday Loans

by Patrick Lunsford May 2, 2013 9 Responses

The Massachusetts Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation and the Division of Banks this week announced a series of cease orders targeting unlicensed lenders and a licensed debt collector that were not adhering to the state’s loan consumer protections.

In conjunction with the actions, the state issued a letter to the 408 companies currently licensed as debt collectors in Mass., advising them that they must ensure that they collect loans only on behalf of properly licensed creditors.

Who What When Where Why

HOW, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, WHO?: Process Serving and Collections

by Joel Rosenthal May 6, 2013 5 Responses

Put yourself in the shoes for a moment of a large national creditor. You spend millions of dollars a year reimbursing your legal network firms for process serving expenses but you are completely blind as to HOW, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN and best of all WHO are the process servers. You know that the FTC looked at process serving in 2009 and this February the head of the CFPB’s Enforcement Department uttered the words “process serving” as an area of interest in his speech at the DBA conference. You realize that you have to establish compliance standards for process serving but you really do not know much about process serving as you do not have any direct relationships with collection industry process servers.

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Collecting Debt One Manually Dialed Call at a Time

by Chris Bohlin May 10, 2013 4 Responses

A court recently ruled that calls to mobile phones must be done manually and not via any system with the capacity to make automated dials. The challenge itself is quite simple: How does an organization, charged with recovering debt from consumers, make enough “manual” phone calls to a growing mobile population to reach enough consumers to actually make any money?

RoboSigner

Dismissed Lawsuit Against Debt Buyer Tried to Hop on Robo-Signing Bandwagon

by Patrick Lunsford May 3, 2013 2 Responses

A district judge in Maryland last month dismissed a potential class action lawsuit against a debt buyer due, in part, to a rejection of the notion that a technical error constituted a violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA). Another claim that tried to piggyback on the widely-publicized “robo-signing” issue with debt collection lawsuits was also rejected.

Customer service team working in headsets, woman in front.

Local TV Station Humanizes Debt Collectors

by Patrick Lunsford April 30, 2013 2 Responses

A television station in Tampa, Fla. visited the office of a local collection agency and found something shocking: a pretty nice office staffed with pretty nice people.

“We expected a big, corporate boiler room operation,” wrote FOX 13 consumer reporter Chris Chmura.“Instead, we found a bright, clean, and remarkably small office.”

RoboSigner

California Sues JPMorgan Chase Over Debt Collection Lawsuits

by Patrick Lunsford May 10, 2013 2 Responses

California Attorney General Kamala Harris Thursday announced that her office has filed an enforcement action against JPMorgan Chase & Co. alleging that the bank engaged in fraudulent and unlawful debt-collection practices against tens of thousands of Californians.

The suit alleges that Chase engaged in widespread robo-signing of court documents in debt collection cases, among other practices, to commit abuses against approximately 100,000 California credit card borrowers over at least a three-year period.

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Are Debt Collectors Missing a Chance to be “Inside” the CFPB?

by Stephanie Eidelman May 7, 2013 1 Response

The CFPB has three advisory boards that steer its thinking on financial regulation: one that is comprised of consumer advocates (naturally) and two made up of small banking interests. There is no board for large financial institutions.

There is also no advisory board for other companies, like debt collection agencies. An article in the Washington Post partially explains why. But still: how can the industry gain credibility and influence when other similarly sized industries seem better positioned?

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A Fake Debt Collector Story with an Odd Twist

by Patrick Lunsford April 22, 2013 1 Response

As if legitimate debt collection agencies don’t have enough to worry about with scam artists posing as collectors, a story out of Australia underscores the peril of trying to do things right. This time the fake collector wasn’t working on behalf of himself for quick cash, he was created by a company that should have been a client of the ARM industry.

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Executive Change: Bonnie Finley to Columbia Ultimate as VP of Sales

by insideARM.com May 13, 2013 (Be the first to respond)

The Columbia Ultimate family of companies, industry leaders in providing clients with revenue maximization solutions for more than 30 years, recently named Bonnie Finley vice president of sales. In this position Finley is responsible for driving sales for each of the five Columbia Ultimate companies while working cross functionally with the senior executive team.