Smacking Down the Debt Collectors for a Little While

Good news: those reprehensible debt collection firms have been brought to heel on a federal level, at least a little bit. They're obvious rules you would have thought would be the law in the first place, but hey, we have to start where we are.

According to today's Star Tribune business section, they must stop:

• Collecting debts they cannot verify.
• Withholding detailed information from consumers about their overdue debt before filing a collection suit. (Details that prove the debt is verified.)
• Suing or threatening to sue over debts that are too old to be legally collected.
• Selling debts they buy to other debt collectors.
• Mass-producing lawsuits using misleading documents and robo-signed court filings.
• Collecting debts they know are inaccurate or cannot be legally enforced.

Like I said, common sense stuff that it's hard to believe was ever legal.

The only bad news in the story is that it's not retroactive to past cases that are already settled, and that the debt collectors weren't fined enough to make them pay attention.

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Here are a couple of my past posts on debt collectors.

Debt Collection Eye-Opener

Lori Swanson Gets It Right on Debt Collectors