Welcome to the Research Assistant Weekly Newsletter - a subscriber-only resource for insight into emerging compliance challenges, details on peer calls, and links to new Research Assistant reports, documents, tools, and more.
This week during our Research Assistant Peer Call a member raised a recent lawsuit they received claiming that a cease communication and refusal to pay was not honored by the collection agency because the account was still being reported to the credit reporting agencies.
This consumer attorney may be grasping at straws with this claim but could this become our, dare I say it… Hunstein? The argument the plaintiff is trying to make is that credit reporting is a “collection activity.” But last I checked, the FCRA does not have a “refusal to pay” credit reporting deletion requirement.
Even more concerning is that this seems to be a trend steaming from credit repair organizations and consumer attorneys to ultimately manipulate consumer credit reports. We saw this play out in the Dukes v. LVNV Funding, Case Number 21-cv-1342 (M.D. FL 2022), late last year.
Litigating these cases may not be ideal but it may save the industry from another non-sensible decision, like Hunstein. The key to success relies on robust policies, procedures and controls when it comes to managing disputes, cease communications, and refusal to pay notifications.
Documents and Crowdsourced Materials:
Top Reads:
Upcoming Webinars/ Other Announcements:
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Work Smarter Not Harder – Getting the Most Out of Speech Analytics and QA Controls, at 2:00 on May 16th- Register here.
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Reminder: Send any topics or questions that you want to discuss to sara@insidearm.com by Thursday to ensure it makes it on our agenda!
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