Thanks to ACA International for first reporting that the Washington, D.C. City Council yesterday unanimously passed an updated version of its emergency debt collection bill with a few new amendments, and the bill will go into effect next month when other restrictions put in place at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic are set to expire.
The D.C. Council last month unveiled a pair of bills that sought to implement temporary restrictions on how debts were collected in the District, with the intention of passing more comprehensive legislation once the pandemic was over.
Under the bills, collectors would be limited to making three phone calls in a seven-day period, while also addressing communications made via email and text messaging. The bills also established that its provisions apply to debt buyers as well as collectors. As well, partial payments or written or oral affirmations of a debt would not restart or extend the statute of limitations. Collectors would also have to be in possession of specific information prior to initiating any collection activity.
The bill has been amended to note that calls initiated by a consumer or made by a debt collector at the request of a consumer do not count toward the call caps. The bill also clarifies the information that is required to be maintained or provided to consumers when the debts were incurred using credit cards. The bill now allows collectors to inform consumers that certain information about the debt is available rather than requiring collectors to send the information unsolicited. The amendments also corrected a technical error that set the financial penalties for violations.
Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser is expected to sign the bill into law, according to ACA’s report.
“Our current debt collection law was passed 50 years ago and must be updated to address modern forms of communication and combat abusive debt collection practices,” said Washington, D.C., Attorney General Karl Racine, one of the authors of the bill, in a statement when the original legislation was introduced.
