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 one of our RA peers was questioning whether or not sending multiple electronic communications during the validation period would constitute overshadowing under the FDCPA.
As a refresher, overshadowing is defined as any collection activity that “overshadows” the consumer’s right to dispute the validity of a debt during the validation period. A consumer has 30 days to dispute the validity of a debt and the debt collector is required to provide verification documents. Once the verification documents are sent, the debt collector can resume normal collection activity after allowing for a reasonable period of time for the consumer to receive the documents, 5 days excluding legal holidays and weekends based on the CFPB interpretation and clarification in Regulation F.
Well, what if you have an operational request to conduct a text or email campaign during the validation period? Technically yes, but with all things compliance it depends on the content of the text or email. Before hitting send during the validation period make sure that the communication you are sending does not:
However you may want to consider providing information about:
As always, make sure you build into your monitoring and audit program an evaluation of your entire communication frequency and evaluate if the frequency of communication is creating consumer harm or could be considered harassment and adjust the frequency and timing accordingly.
Documents and Crowdsourced Materials:
Top Reads:
Upcoming Webinars/ Other Announcements:
-
Going to ACA’s Annual Convention? Join us for our RA meet-up at Kitty O’Sheas July 26, 2023 at 3:30 CT!
-
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!
|
