Archive for January, 2008

[Consumer Law & Policy Blog crosspost]
According to a Freddie Mac study, 57% of homeowners are unaware of the workout options that could help them avoid foreclosure. And this is an improvement, up from 61% in 2005. Will the lender actually work something out? It’s worth a try, and lenders do know that allowing a house [...]

Apparently, the RIAA thinks you should have to pay $1.5 million for that copy of MC Hammer’s “Too Legit to Quit” you downloaded for your last 80s party.
Google’s copyright lawyer, William Patry, commented that the bill was the most “outrageously gluttonous IP bill ever introduced in the US.” I think that might be putting it [...]

We are all consumers of democracy. Or, at least, we think we are. David Earnhardt’s “Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections” makes a convincing case that voter fraud has been rampant in the last four elections, making U.S. elections worse than elections in many third-world countries. Except that in the U.S., nobody was paying [...]

According to Consumerist, Comcast is now making it easy for customers to opt out of mandatory binding arbitration. This is great news, and a consumer-friendly move from Comcast, which lately is best known for throttling its customers’ bandwidth.
I am a Comcast customer (somewhat by necessity), and completed the online form in roughly five seconds. Click [...]

I am torn. I don’t know whether I should post this link or hope it dwindles into obscurity (unlikely). The website says it all:

You Walk Away promises to help homeowners walk away from their current mortgage with no debt, no strings, and says ballsy things like this:
You will immediately know the exact amount of days [...]

‘Tis the season of phone calls from candidates’ phone banks. Or, if you are really lucky, for dumb recordings of candidates’ sound bites.
My wife, formerly a fundraiser, tells me that these phone calls are essential to campaigning, whether for political office or for an organizational fund raiser. I don’t buy it. There is nothing worse [...]

Gail Charnley is a toxicologist and biochemist, and the head of HealthRisk Strategies, a consulting firm that specializes in risk assessment (apparently for producers of toxic substances). According to the Washington Post, she has opposed stricter emission standards for power plants. She also shilled for the pesticide industry without disclosing a serious conflict of interest–the [...]

How is it possible for a radio to cost as little as $4.99? For that matter, how is it possible for a “big ticket item” like a computer to cost as little as $200. It isn’t. Not really.
Along the way, all sorts of other costs go into that cheap radio or computer. In “The Story [...]

Over at Consumer Rights Watch, Mark Ireland has stated two truths about Payday lending:
1. Payday lending is a business that simply keeps people in debt, rather than provide them with an emergency safety net, and
2. Only enforcement of a comprehensive interest rate cap at or around 36 percent for small loans will solve the debt [...]

Let’s use the $150 billion currently proposed for rebates and corporate welfare to instead fund an 18-month infrastructure and government-efficiency initiative. That is what Bob MacNeal says in today’s StarTribune. I couldn’t agree more. The analogies to the WPA, Roosevelt, and the depression are quite apropos. We have an economy largely destroyed by rampant unregulated [...]

Public interest lobbyist Ron Elwood and former Minnesota attorney general Mark Ireland recently started Consumer Rights Watch, a blog on consumer issues in Minnesota.
Other than a glaring omission in the links section, it looks like a great blog. Check it out.

Getting served with a lawsuit is one of the more upsetting things that can happen to you. When the process server hands a summons and complaint to you or to someone “of suitable age and discretion” who answers your door, they are dragging you into the legal system. But really, it is not as bad [...]

Bill Clinton and Arnold Schwarzenegger are heading up a great initiative to get people to open bank accounts rather than use check cashing centers etc. that charge what is often a hefty a fee to cash their paycheck. In a commentary in the WSJ, they point out that: the number of check cashers, payday lenders [...]

This morning, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors made an “emergency” rate cut today of .75% to the federal funds rate. (Federal Reserve press release.) The Fed, in addition to everyone else, seems to be worried about the state of the economy and the potential for recession.
But what does this really mean? If you already [...]

The smell of tax returns is in the air, and so is the stink of shysters. Tax season means tax preparers and others are pushing high-cost refund anticipation loans. H&R Block, the popular low-cost tax preparation service, pushes refund anticipation loans on its “Fast Money Options” page.
Nothing is free, and nobody will pass up an [...]

Oh, there are a lot of complicated economic models to explain why consumers are turning to the internet in ever-increasing numbers to do their shopping, but it seems to me the reason may have more to do with practices like Best Buy’s insistence on collecting phone numbers just so they can send out a pile [...]

Not compared with debt collectors in India, anyway.
Vinod Kumar was sitting in a friend’s car listening to the radio one evening last January when a stranger appeared, yanked him from the vehicle and beat him with an iron bar.
To collect a debt, that is. Here in the good ol’ USA, debt collectors still rely on [...]

Occasionally we receive e-mails from someone looking for representation outside of Minnesota. While we try to help everyone we can, we are not licensed in other states, and other states may have very different laws, procedural rules, and legal climates. We are happy to give a referral, but more often than not, we will simply [...]

[Consumer Law & Policy Blog crosspost]
Carey Greenberg-Berger at the Consumerist followed up my digging into presidential candidates’ participation in consumer legislation with some more digging, and looked into the candidates’ rhetoric on toy safety, one of the “hot” consumer issues of 2007.
The Democrat front-runners gave the matter lip service, advocating better testing, more funding for [...]