I'm a former consumer investigative reporter for USA based Post Newsweek TV. I will be sharing with you tips and horror stories of people who have been scammed by the low life particularly as related to the Internet.
Consumers scored a major victory on Friday asJPMorgan Chase, the nation's largest credit card lender, announced it will drop a mandatory arbitration clause from its credit card contracts. The announcement was made with an eye toward settling a class action lawsuit targeting Chase and several other major financial institutions.
The class action, filed by Berger & Montague PC of Philadelphia, also names Bank of America, Citigroup, Discover, and Capital One as defendants. The suit accuses the... Read Full Story
11/19/2009 FTC Press Release
Defendants Could Pay More Than $1 Million for Failing to Disclose Terms of Recurring-Fee Plan
An online marketer of purportedly “free” Internet auction kits, which automatically charged unwitting consumers $59.95 a month for enrollment in an “online supplier” program for Internet auctions, has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that its actions violated federal law. The separate proposed court settlements with the company and two of its former... Read Full Story
An online marketer of purportedly “free” Internet auction kits, which automatically charged unwitting consumers $59.95 a month for enrollment in an “online supplier” program for Internet auctions, has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that its actions violated federal law. The separate proposed court settlements with the company and two of its former executives bar them from similar deceptive conduct in the future, and require them to make specific disclosures to ensure... Read Full Story
AT&T has amended its terms of service to preclude consumers from participating in class actions, whether handled via litigation or arbitration. The terms of service explicitly prohibit consumers from bringing class actions, even in an arbitration setting: “Any arbitration under this Agreement will take place on an individual basis; class arbitrations and class actions are not permitted.”
The service agreement already precludes any litigation outside of small claims court. Bold-faced type... Read Full Story
The National Arbitration Forum will stop administering consumer arbitration disputes as part of a settlement agreement with the Minnesota Attorney General. Forum, as the group is known, says it ”lacks the necessary resources to defend against increasing challenges to arbitration on all fronts.”
In her lawsuit, Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson claimed the group, the largest arbitration company in the country for consumer credit disputes, misrepresented its independence and hid... Read Full Story
When handling consumer disputes, credit card companies have a critical tool for keeping down legal costs: The option to avoid court and go to arbitration. Unbeknownst to many consumers, card agreements typically include an arbitration clause that waives a card holder's right to sue. This gives banks the ability to use the clause defensively to protect against lawsuits, or offensively to go after debt collections. On Wednesday, a Congressional committee held a hearing on the Obama... Read Full Story
Arbitration clauses -- those mandating dispute resolutions other than litigation -- became quite common in consumer contracts in recent years, especially for credit cards and cell phones. The clauses are greatly advantageous for corporations, as they are spared the expense and hours needed to effectively defend against a consumer or class action lawsuit. Sometimes, however, corporations benefit in less obvious -- and more nefarious -- ways. A number of suspicions were reinforced this week... Read Full Story
Attorney General Lori Swanson said Sunday that her office reached a sweeping legal settlement that requires a Minnesota company to get out of the business of arbitrating credit card debts and other consumer collection disputes nationwide. The agreement comes less than a week after Swanson sued the National Arbitration Forum over its handling of debt disputes between consumers and credit card companies. The lawsuit accused the St. Louis Park-based firm of violating state consumer fraud... Read Full Story
With President Obama's health care reform push seemingly stalled for the summer, Republicans turned their fire Tuesday back toward card check legislation. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., attacked any compromise bill, even one that cuts out card check itself. He called any such deal a Trojan horse for Big Labor to push through another long-sought goal: mandatory arbitration. "We suspected from the beginning that binding arbitration was packaged with the elimination of the secret ballot in order to... Read Full Story
In a victory for consumers, the Supreme Court held today that credit-card holders can sometimes fight mandatory arbitration agreements, giving them a better prospect of victory in claims brought by banks and creditors. The decision arose from a 2003 suit filed by Discover in Maryland state court, trying to recover $10,000 in past-due charges from cardholder Betty Vaden. In a class-action counterclaim, Vaden asserted that Discover's finance charges, interest, and late fees violated Maryland... Read Full Story
