There was a significant uptick in the number of lawsuits filed in August alleging violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, according to data released today by WebRecon.
The jumps in each category, compared with July, reverse a significant drop that had been reported a month earlier. The number of lawsuits filed in each of the categories are all roughly in line with the numbers that were filed a year ago, leading WebRecon to call this “The Big Rebound to Averageness.”
Whether consumer attorneys took the month off in July to go on vacation and came back in August with a vengeance remains to be seen.
For the year, only the number of FCRA lawsuits is higher in 2017 than it was at the same point last year. The number of FDCPA and TCPA suits are both below last year’s totals.
Meanwhile, the number of complaints filed against collection agencies with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau continues to explode. The 33,243 complaints that have been filed through the first eight months of 2017 are 24% higher than the number of complaints that were filed through the same period a year ago, according to WebRecon.
One small bright spot for the ARM industry in August was a decline in the number of complaints filed with the Better Business Bureau, which dropped nearly 37% on a month-over-month basis, and are 3% below a year ago totals.
