• What people are saying
• You’re Invited: Virtual convening and anniversary awards reception 
• FinLit training in Philadelphia was first of three; next stop, Chicago
• Coalition Efforts
• CFPB Watch
• Class Action Database: Citibank on the hook for illegal robocalls
• About Consumer Action

What people are saying

"Thank you for an informative, interactive, workshop. All information was relevant to my clients! I look forward to implementing all I learned today.” —Philadelphia “Money Management 1-2-3” training participant E. Burgenson, Norwescap, Phillipsburg, New Jersey (subscribe to our mailing list or visit our website to learn about upcoming webinars)

You’re Invited: Virtual convening and anniversary awards reception

By Monica Steinisch

It’s time to gather with friends, colleagues and supporters to mark Consumer Action’s 53 years of educating, empowering and advocating for consumers. Please join us on Wednesday, Nov. 13, for one or both of our anniversary events.

This year’s virtual convening, from 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. (Eastern), will focus on the state of the credit and consumer reporting system, with discussion by a panel of experts that includes representatives from the National Consumer Law Center, Consumer Reports, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Register for the “Fairness, Transparency and Accountability in Credit and Consumer Reporting” webinar here.

That evening, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. (Eastern), at the AT&T Forum for Technology, Entertainment and Policy in Washington, D.C., we will hold our annual Consumer Excellence Awards ceremony, where we recognize consumer champions in the public and private sectors. This year’s honorees are the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection; the National Consumer Law Center; and the Financial Empowerment Center at Prince George’s Community College. Special Recognition Awards will be presented to Mark Espinoza, senior director of public affairs for Walmart, and Brian Rothery, vice president of government and public affairs for Enterprise Mobility. 

RSVP for the anniversary awards cocktail reception here.

To learn more, please visit our anniversary webpage. 

We look forward to seeing you soon!

FinLit training in Philadelphia was first of three; next stop, Chicago

By Nelson Santiago

In September, Consumer Action outreach staffers and a lineup of distinguished speakers delivered the first in a series of financial literacy train-the-trainer events introducing our network of community-based organizations to our newly updated Money Management 1-2-3 curriculum and sharing invaluable strategies and best practices for community financial education. This was our first out-of-state training for CBOs since the pandemic, and we're happy to be back out there! (If you'll be anywhere near Chicago next week, sign up for the Nov. 7 session here.)

The Philadelphia training kicked off with a special segment on trending cyberthreats, presented by Tim Pappa, an incident response engineer with Walmart Global Tech's Cyber Deception team. Pappa, who previously worked as a supervisory special agent and profiler with the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU), had lots to share, including the recommendation that attendees be increasingly wary of the threat landscape as it relates to AI.

Two additional guest speakers at the event were Jackie Lam, an accredited financial counselor (AFC), financial writer and educator, and Heath Carelock, AFC, of Carelosophy Social Impact Solutions, LLC/CARE Financial Impact. 

Lam presented an engaging segment on "Meeting Your Clients Where They're At,” and trained attendees about how clients’ personal narratives around money, negative financial experiences, and societal/cultural factors can impact their path toward financial health.

Carelock's segment, "Client-Centered Financial Education: Customizing strategies and tools in financial wellness," offered a wealth of best practices for equipping clients with financial knowledge and helping them improve their financial fitness. Carelock also discussed relationships and money, and ways to help clients deal with financial stress and explore financial therapy and counseling.

Lam and Carelock also walked clients through the topics in Consumer Action's Money Management 1-2-3 curriculum and discussed how the best practices and advice they offered could be applied when conducting community education and financial coaching using the materials.

Nelson Santiago, one of Consumer Action's bilingual community outreach managers, speaks with Philadelphia training participants

The Consumer Action team included the agency's executive director, Anna Flores, who was on hand to inform attendees about a mini-grant opportunity for participants wishing to conduct formal education using the Money Management 1-2-3 curriculum; community outreach manager Jamie Woo, who helped recruit organizations that serve the Chinese immigrant community; and community outreach manager Nelson Santiago, who provided an overview of the curriculum and offered a slew of resources that attendees can use when educating consumers about planning a secure future.

Consumer Action's Money Management 1-2-3 trainings and related mini-grants are possible thanks to a grant from Walmart. Joshua Phair, a senior manager of public affairs and government relations for Walmart, was on hand to welcome participants and talk about the company's longtime commitment to consumer education and financial empowerment.

Training participant Denise Waite, from Bucks County Housing Group, noted in her evaluation of the event: "Everyone was knowledgeable and informative—very engaging. A lot of takeaways! Thank you, Consumer Action and Walmart!”

To register for the Nov. 7 training in Chicago, click here.

Coalition Efforts

By Monica Steinisch

Consumer Action and its allies recently called on policymakers and regulators about these important issues:

Unfair prices for Ozempic and Wegovy. Consumer Action was one of more than 20 consumer-interest organizations to sign on to a letter to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra urging him to use HHS’s existing legal authority to lower prices for semaglutide, a drug, sold under the brand names Ozempic and Wegovy, used for the management of type 2 diabetes and obesity. Semaglutide is already being used by hundreds of thousands of U.S. patients who receive health care through programs like Medicare and Medicaid, costing beneficiaries and taxpayers billions of dollars annually. In fact, the pharmaceutical company that manufactures these drugs, Novo Nordisk, charges patients in the U.S. up to 15 times more than it charges patients in Canada, Japan or Europe. By using its authority to license competition for Ozempic and Wegovy, HHS would end the price gouging of patients and taxpayers. Read the letter here.

Streamlining loss mitigation procedures. In response to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) Notice of Proposed Rulemaking under the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA), Regulation X, consumer and housing advocates submitted comments commending the agency’s efforts to make streamlined loss mitigation reviews for struggling mortgage borrowers a permanent option, while also offering suggestions for refining the regulatory text to better protect borrowers. These recommendations include clarifying what types of communications from borrowers constitute a request for loss mitigation assistance; requiring mortgage servicers to exercise reasonable diligence in the loss mitigation review process—namely, an obligation to move the review process along; lengthening any minimum response periods to at least 21 days, to account for mailing delays; requiring servicers to treat a request for assistance from a potential successor-in-interest as a request of assistance that triggers dual tracking protections; and ensuring that borrowers with zombie second mortgages have a reasonable opportunity to apply for loss mitigation and avoid unnecessary foreclosure. These suggested changes would contribute to the overall effort to keep families in their homes. Read the letter here.

Requiring greater language access from loan servicers. Civil rights and consumer advocacy organizations submitted comments to the CFPB in response to the agency’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking under the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA), Regulation X. In the letter, the groups expressed support for the Bureau’s proposals to require mortgage loan servicers to provide specified written communications in both English and Spanish to all borrowers; specified written communications in five servicer-selected languages upon borrower request; and language assistance for specified oral communications. They further suggested that the agency expand the mandate for oral interpretation to cover more than five languages; specifically require that the five servicer-selected languages for written translations be based on a regular assessment of the language needs of the servicer’s borrower population; and remove the provisions that require servicers to provide translated written materials when the borrower received marketing in that language (due to the limited benefits it would provide to LEP consumers, particularly if a requirement for oral interpretation services in a broad array of languages were implemented). Language barriers make the process of seeking permanent loss mitigation solutions even more difficult. Requiring these steps of mortgage loan servicers would further the agency’s efforts to make avoiding foreclosure an achievable outcome for LEP borrowers. Read the letter here.

CFPB Watch

By Ruth Susswein

Consumers’ new financial data rights 

Consumers will have the ability to require and revoke access to their financial data now that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has released its Personal Financial Data Rights rule. 

The goals of the rule are to:

• Make it easy for consumers to share their financial data with other companies (and maintain much of their banking history); 
• Increase competition among financial firms, which is expected to lower customer costs and/or increase interest paid over time; and, most important,
• Provide consumers with some control and protection over their financial data.

Data protection: The Personal Financial Data Rights rule says that third parties can only collect, use or store your data to deliver a product that you’ve requested. This means that companies cannot use or retain your financial information for their own unrelated business reasons, like future sales pitches or to share your data with other companies. This is significant.

What’s more, when you revoke access to your data, the cancellation process must be simple, and the company’s access “ends immediately.” Your financial data is expected to be deleted within one year, unless you specifically reauthorize the company’s access. 

Access: This rule requires banks and credit unions to safely share financial data from your checking accounts, credit cards, prepaid cards, mobile wallets (e.g., Apple Pay, Google Pay) and payment apps (e.g., PayPal, Zelle, Venmo). 

Consumers will be able to access—or authorize a third party to access—account balance and transaction information, and information needed to initiate payments and verify accounts. Banks and others will be required to make your data available without charging any fees.

The financial data rule will take effect in phases. Big banks will be mandated to securely transfer your data upon request by April 2026, smaller banks and credit unions will have until 2030 to comply, and small community banks will be exempt from this rule. 

Banks are not happy with what they perceive as too much liability for safely sharing our financial data, and they’ve already sued the CFPB to stop this new rule.

CFPB’s medical debt collection advisory  

Seeking to curb illegal collection tactics, the CFPB has put medical debt collectors on notice. The Bureau’s guidance reminds debt collectors that they are responsible for ensuring that debts are accurate, valid and substantiated before collecting. Under the federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), it is illegal for debt collectors to collect debts that are not owed, not properly documented, or for services not received.

“Medical billing is often riddled with errors, including inflated or duplicative charges, fees for services the patient never received, or charges already paid,” said CFPB Director Rohit Chopra. “The CFPB is taking action to ensure that Americans are not unfairly chased by debt collectors over unsubstantiated or invalid medical bills.”

The CFPB warns debt collectors against:

• Double billing (collecting on bills that have already been paid)
• Upcoding (falsely charging for medical services never provided)
• Unsubstantiated collections (charging for medical debts without proof of service)

The Bureau also has advice for consumers: Pause and review your rights before responding to a medical debt collector. For example, debt collectors cannot make abusive phone calls, call you at any time of day or night, or continue contacting you if you have told them to stop. 

Before responding, the Bureau recommends that you:

• Request an itemized bill and carefully review the charges
• Negotiate the amount owed, including talking to a hospital’s patient advocate
• Contact an attorney if you believe your rights are being violated, and complain to the CFPB online or by phone (855-411-CFPB [2372])

By law, nonprofit hospitals are required to offer financial assistance to lower-income consumers. 

Separately, the CFPB has proposed a rule to ban medical debt from appearing on credit reports, even though the debt would still be owed.

Class Action Database: Citibank on the hook for illegal robocalls

By Monica Steinisch

Among recent settlements added to the Consumer Action Class Action Database is the $8.85 million settlement that the owners of Breyers Ice Cream (Conopco, Inc. and Unilever United States) will pay to settle allegations that the companies’ labeling of their “Natural Vanilla” ice cream gave consumers the inaccurate impression that the product contained vanilla flavor derived only from the vanilla plant and not from non-vanilla plant sources. If you purchased Breyers Natural Vanilla ice cream between April 1, 2016, and Aug. 14, 2024, you may be eligible for payment. The deadline for claims is Feb. 19, 2025. 

Of note is the $29.5 million settlement Citibank agreed to in order to resolve claims that the bank’s robocalls to non-customers violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). Under TCPA rules, telemarketers must obtain prior express written consent from consumers before robocalling them. If you received one or more calls with an artificial or prerecorded voice from Citibank on your cell phone between Aug. 15, 2014, and July 31, 2024, concerning a past-due credit card account, and you are not a current or former Citibank cardholder, customer or authorized user, you may be entitled to compensation. The deadline for claims is Dec. 20, 2024.

About Consumer Action

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Consumer Action is a nonprofit organization that has championed the rights of underrepresented consumers nationwide since 1971. Throughout its history, the organization has dedicated its resources to promoting financial and consumer literacy and advocating for consumer rights both in the media and before lawmakers to promote economic justice for all. With the resources and infrastructure to reach millions of consumers, Consumer Action is one of the most recognized, effective and trusted consumer organizations in the nation.

Consumer education. To empower consumers to assert their rights in the marketplace, Consumer Action provides a range of educational resources. The organization’s extensive library of free publications offers in-depth information on many topics related to personal money management, housing, insurance and privacy. At Consumer-Action.org, visitors have instant access to important consumer news, downloadable materials, an online “help desk,” the Take Action advocacy database, and more. Our in-language media outreach allows us to share scam alerts and other timely consumer news with a wide non-English-speaking audience.

Community outreach. With a special focus on serving low- and moderate-income and limited-English-speaking consumers, Consumer Action maintains strong ties to a national network of more than 6,500 community-based organizations. Outreach services include in-person and web-based training and dissemination of financial and consumer education materials in many languages, including English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese. Consumer Action’s network is the largest and most diverse of its kind.

Advocacy. Consumer Action is deeply committed to ensuring that underrepresented consumers are represented in the national media and in front of lawmakers. The organization promotes pro-consumer policy, regulation and legislation by taking positions on dozens of bills at the state and national levels and submitting comments and testimony on a host of consumer protection issues. Additionally, its diverse staff provides the media with expert commentary on key consumer issues supported by solid data and victim testimony.