I first met Rich Cordray the night before the first-ever Ohio state Consumer Protection Summit in Columbus back in 2010. It was long before the CFPB existed, and even longer before he would be considered for the job as America’s top consumer advocate. My book Stop Getting Ripped Off had [Keep reading]
Wait, someone has my salary information? Essentually, my actual pay stubs? What I earn, what I pay for health care,what my taxes are? And they sell that data? To debt collectors? And…it’s Equifax? You mean, THAT Equifax? That was the collective voice of the Internet this weekend when Redditors discovered [Keep reading]
(NOTE: This story was updated 11/9/2017 at 2 p.m. with a statement from Freedom Debt Relief) The nation’s largest debt settlement firm was sued by federal regulators today, who accuse the company of misleading consumers and taking their money for doing little or no work. Freedom Debt Relief, based in [Keep reading]
More than half the homeowners in five New York-area counties, and half of owners in one county in Virginia and New Mexico, would face a tax increase under the Republican tax plan unveiled this week because it would limit local property tax deductions on federal taxes. Roughly one-quarter of homeowners in [Keep reading]
Tinkering with tax law is a matter of picking winners and losers, usually done with as blunt instrument rather than a scalpel. A nip here, a tuck there, an amputation over there. Pull these levers, push those, and call it “reform.” It’s not. It’s just doing favors for some people [Keep reading]
We’ve come a long way since Mark Zuckerberg famously said that it was “crazy” to think fake news on Facebook influenced the 2016 election. How far? Not long ago, Facebook said it had identified only a few thousands suspicious accounts on its service that might have been linked to Russia. [Keep reading]
Consumerist.com (2005-2017) — an obituary. From the start, Consumerist.com was different. Very different. From my perch writing a consumer column called The Red Tape Chronicles for MSNBC.com, I watched in shock (and a little jealousy) as the site boldly went where other journalists feared to go. A few consumers would [Keep reading]
He is a master of the simplest “hack” of all — impersonation. In recent months, he has pretended to be White House officials like Jared Kushner and Reince Preibus or even Eric Trump. And it worked. He fooled plenty of people who should have known better, including Anthony Scaramucci, former Utah [Keep reading]
While you were busy worrying about health insurance premiums and perhaps Donald Trump’s latest Tweet, the U.S. Senate spat in the face of American consumers this week. In a 50-50 vote that required Vice President Mike Pence to break the tie, the Senate voted to nullify a pro-consumer rule that [Keep reading]
Click here if the embedded video doesn’t work for you.Some days as a journalist, you find yourself bouncing around in a pickup truck with your dog, riding through 20 acres of pumpkins learning about cover crops on a farm that can trace its origins to the American Revolution. Those are [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan