FTC Policy Statement on Unfairness
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Appended to International Harvester Co. , 104 F.T.C. 949, 1070 (1984). See 15 U.S.C. § 45(n). The Honorable Wendell H. Ford Chairman, Consumer Subcommittee Committee on Commerce, Science, and...
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Business Blog
Eviction fiction? $15 million FTC-CFPB settlement with Trans Union and tenant screening subsidiary underscores importance of FCRA’s “maximum possible accuracy” requirement
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Section 607(b) of the Fair Credit Reporting Act requires consumer reporting agencies to follow reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy of consumer report information concerning the...
Business Blog
FTC lawsuit insists on FCRA compliance and transparency from background report providers
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Advertising keywords are the carnival barkers of the internet. Their job is to shout, “Me, me, me, me, me!” to people searching online for a product or service. If successful, they’ll get prospective...
Business Blog
Tenant background check reports: Put it in writing
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As a landlord – or property manager or other housing provider – you may run background checks on prospective tenants. These reports can include rental and eviction history, credit history, criminal...
Business Blog
Tenant screening practices: The FTC wants to hear from you
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Millions of people in the U.S. rent their home. Their landlord could be a small mom-and-pop property owner, a large property management company, a public housing agency, or some other kind of...
Business Blog
FTC and Wisconsin aim to show deceptive timeshare exit claims the exit
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Many people – including older consumers – find themselves tied to pricey timeshares that no longer meet their needs. They were sold on the idea of idyllic getaways, but now need to get away from those...
Business Blog
Home economics: $62 million FTC settlement addresses Opendoor’s alleged misrepresentations to homeowners
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As the old adage goes, the three rules of real estate are “location, location, location.” But according to the FTC, online real estate company Opendoor Labs pitched its services to home sellers with...
Business Blog
A word to landlords about eviction moratoriums
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According to a recent CFPB report , the pandemic has left more than 8.8 million consumers behind on their rent. Tenants at risk of homelessness are disproportionately people of color, primarily Black...
Business Blog
Consumer gag clauses: Totally not awesome under CRFA
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Moon Unit Zappa’s 1982 song “Valley Girl” popularized the phrase “gag me with a spoon.” We doubt the lyric “gag me with a form contract clause” would have been a hit, but it’s among the tactics...
Business Blog
FTC challenges massive overseas real estate investment operation harming American consumers
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Based on the promoters’ promises, it sounded like a tropical paradise: a luxury enclave called Sanctuary Belize featuring a championship golf course, a new airport with direct flights to the U.S., and...
Business Blog
$3 million FCRA settlement puts tenant background screening at the forefront
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When people are looking to rent a house or apartment, the most important “screening” isn’t on the windows of the prospective new place. It’s the tenant background screening that goes on behind the...
Business Blog
FTC says deceptive rental listings were nothing to write home about
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As the song goes, “A house is not a home.” And as alleged in an FTC lawsuit against the operators of rental listing websites , sometimes an apartment isn’t an apartment. Steven Shayan, Kevin Shayan...
Competition Matters
Coming Soon: what’s new in residential real estate brokerage competition?
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More than ten years ago, the FTC and the Department of Justice published a joint report outlining some concerns about impediments to competition in the residential real estate industry. At an upcoming...
Business Blog
The lesson of the MARS Rule: Not one penny up front
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Like calling an NFL lineman “Tiny,” we appreciate an ironic name as much as the next person. But it’s different when a company calls itself – among other things – Consumer Defense, Preferred Law, and...
Business Blog
Will a $63 million FTC-CFPB settlement encourage Green Tree to turn over a new leaf?
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As the name suggests, Green Tree Servicing was supposed to service homeowners’ mortgages by collecting and crediting monthly payments. But according to a $63 million settlement announced by the FTC...
Business Blog
FTC's record-setting Do Not Call settlement: 4 tips for business and one candid suggestion
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Yesterday’s 10th anniversary of the National Do Not Call Registry was a good time to reflect on a decade of progress. But to paraphrase Thomas Jefferson (or Patrick Henry, Irish statesman John Philpot...
Business Blog
Quoth the Maven
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In celebration of Halloween — and with apologies to Edgar Allen Poe — here’s our take on what companies can do to make sure spooky business practices don’t come back to haunt them. Once upon a...
Business Blog
Relief pitching?
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“You can settle your credit card debt for pennies on the dollar without filing for bankruptcy.” For people struggling to stay afloat, Debt Relief USA’s national TV ads must have seemed like a lifeline...
Business Blog
$108 million for homeowners in distress
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Homeowners in financial trouble aren’t getting a lot of great news these days. But 450,177 of them will be getting a check in the mail that represents their share of the FTC’s $108 million settlement...
Business Blog
Data Resellers Liable for Downstream Security Failures
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Of course, no legitimate business would put out a welcome mat for crooks. But as the FTC’s data security cases make clear, that’s the effect when companies fail to take reasonable steps to secure...
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