Citi will refund roughly $700 million to 7 million consumers who paid for add-on credit card services like debt cancellation from 2003-2013 and pay a $35 million civil penalty for deceiving consumers with sale pitches, federal regulators announced today. Citibank and its affiliates intentionally confused consumers, tricking them into purchasing coverage [Keep reading]
One of the easiest ways to save money, and avoid debt, is to buy used cars instead of new. But once you decide that used is for you, there’s a second way to potentially save thousands of dollars — buy privately instead of from a dealer. There are plenty of [Keep reading]
JPMorgan Chase will pay $166 million to settle charges that it engaged in illegal debt collection activities for years, and must adhere to strict new debt collection rules, state and federal authorities announced Wednesday. The bank will also refund at least $50 million to consumers and agree to permanently end [Keep reading]
You might not be surprised to hear that Time Warner Cable mistreated a consumer; you might delight in hearing that a New York judge is making TWC pay $230,000 to an aggrieved consumer. But Judge Alvin Hellerstein’s ruling is particularly stern, and offers enough schadenfreude that it’s worth a quick scan. It’s also [Keep reading]
Buying furniture has always been a perilous, complex affair. There are loads of places you can get your furniture from, for example, you can get your furniture from somewhere like furniture in fashion. You don’t buy a couch the way you buy a television or a laptop computer. You can’t [Keep reading]
It’s a basic tenet of billing practices, debt collection, and fairness — if someone sends you a bill, and you think it’s wrong, you have the right to dispute it and get a prompt response. It’s also federal law. Except Tenet Healthcare, through a firm that handles some of its [Keep reading]
Consumers routinely share their online banking passwords with third-party apps that help with everything from budgeting to tax preparation. Apparently banks would like this to stop. JPMorgan Chase posted this notice on its website in April: “If you give out your chase.com User ID and Password, you are putting your [Keep reading]
PayPal has backed down on its robocalling and robotexting policy. The online money company sent a letter to the Federal Communications on Monday saying it will change its terms of service to clarify when it will use automated calls or texts, and offer an easy way for users to opt out of [Keep reading]
Welcome to the marriage penalty, gay couples! And the end of the health care benefit tax penalty, along with added Social Security benefits — at least in the 13 states where gay marriage wasn’t formerly legally recognized. While emotions overflow about today’s Supreme Court ruling, it’s easy to overlook the real-world [Keep reading]
Buying a mattress fits somewhere in between buying a car and buying a home on the dreaded “babe in the woods” scale. As a big-ticket, infrequent purchase, consumers who go looking for a better night’s sleep find themselves navigating a hazy world full of intentional brand confusion and seemingly meaningless [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan