The New York City Department of Consumer Affairs has extended the period through which it will not issue any enforcement actions for violations of its new language access rule until October 1.
The grace period was set to expire on August 26.
No reason was given for the extension, but it will be very much welcomed by agencies who collect in New York City. Many have said the requirements of the rule make it very difficult to comply with. Agencies have unofficially offered collection services in other languages, but the provisions of this rule present a number of compliance hurdles.
The Department updated the Frequently Asked Questions document it published last week with the updated enforcement date. The original FAQ, which was released on August 6, referenced the August 26 enforcement date. The rest of the original FAQs appear to remain the same in the newly updated document.
Under the proposed rule, debt collectors would be required to:
- Inform consumers — in any initial collection notice and on any public-facing websites maintained by the collector — of the availability of any language access services provided by the collector and of a translation and description of commonly-used debt collection terms in a consumer’s preferred language on the Department’s website;
- Request, record, and retain, to the extent reasonably possible, a record of the language preference of each consumer from whom the collector attempts to collect a debt; and
- Maintain a report identifying, by language, the number of consumer accounts on which an employee of the collector attempted to collect a debt in a language other than English, and the number of employees that attempted to collect on such accounts.
Debt collectors would be prohibited from:
- Providing false, inaccurate, or incomplete translations of any communication to a consumer in the course of attempting to collect a debt; and
- Misrepresenting or omitting a consumer’s language preference when returning, selling, or referring for litigation any consumer account, where the debt collector is aware of such preference.
