Daily Digest – April 28. Article Exposes “Aggressive” Collectors Who Sue Consumers; Payday Loan Complaints Down As Industry Preps For CFPB Rule

The Daily Digest is sponsored by TCN, a leading provider of cloud-based call center technology for enterprises, contact centers, BPOs, and collection agencies worldwide. 

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• ProPublica is at it again. The investigative journalism outfit has published a piece exposing the “aggressive” tactics of debt collectors who file lawsuits against consumers, in some cases over bills as low as $60. The article focuses especially on Nebraska, where the low cost of filing a lawsuit has led to tens of thousands of more suits being filed against consumers than in other states, where the costs to file are higher. What’s interesting, of course, is that debt collectors have a right to sue and to garnish wages when someone does not fulfill their financial obligations but ProPublica is intent on painting collectors as evil when they are just doing their job.

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• An interesting coincidence or a sign of an industry trying to clean itself up? The CFPB has announced it is working on a proposed rule to regulate the payday lending industry, and the number of payday loan complaints filed with the agency dropped in the first three months of this year, compared to the same period last year. Does that mean that payday lenders are behaving better as a means of showing the CFPB that a rule is not necessary? Will the same be true for debt collections, which are still the most complained about category tracked by the CFPB? As the CFPB’s proposed rule on debt collection gets closer to being a reality, will debt collectors be less aggressive or more conciliatory?

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The Daily Digest is sponsored by TCN, a leading provider of cloud-based call center technology for enterprises, contact centers, BPOs, and collection agencies worldwide.