A guide to Consumer Rights
Financing institutions gauge you by taking into account your credit history. Building good credit history is extremely important to one’s life. There are many things that you can be deprived of if you don’t have a good credit history.
Building credit would appropriately mean building your life as well. That is why the magnitude of building credit goes far beyond clothes and groceries. In many ways, iIt is more than just those petty cash advances or cash back rewards. Your credit history is one of the most important factors employers, lenders, property owners, or business owners will consider.
It is therefore very important to handle your credit history with utmost care. It will put a great impact on your way of life, on your career, the way transact business with other people, and even on the place where you live.
To maintain your credit history, you need to know how it is bestowed or rejected in the first place. In the United States, the Federal Government had provided its citizens certain major laws that control credit. These rights have been stated as provisions on Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and Fair Credit Reporting Act. You uneed to take a good look at these laws as itgoes a long way in helping you to maintain your credit history.
With these two particular laws, every consumer is entitled to certain rights. It is extremely important that the consumers know these rights so that they can also identify instances where in they have been mistreated. If you have been subjected to malpractices of debt collectors and lenders, you need to know how to get the isssue resolved rather than just being a victim.
Fair Debt Collection Practices Act
The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act is one of the written laws of the United States. this has been included in the United States Code as Title VIII of the “Consumer Credit Protection Act.”
The main focus of this particular law is on the guaranteed “ethical practices” in the ways of collecting debts upon the consumers. This law ensures customers an opportunity to obtain and dispute legalization of any information regarding a particular debt so as to guarantee the data’s correctness. what this means is that a consumer has the right to check the acuracy of the debt burden and plead against any anomalies.
The aim of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act is to encourage just, rational, and non-discriminatory treatment of consumers by forbidding debt collectors from utilizing unjust, offensive, or misleading actions. This act is applicable to qualified debt collectors. This primarily deals with collectors capable of collecting loans that they didn’t create.
Although this act doesn’t theoretically pertain to department stores, banks, and other lending institutions that have their own debt collectors, it is clear that no lending company of good reputation is allowed to make use of the said practices. this serves as a warning if not a notice to parties engaged in such dubious money laundering acts.
Under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the following provisions were made:
- Debt collectors should only contact the debtor to get details of his whereabouts. they cannot contact other outsiders for this.
- Debt collectors can contact debtors only between 8:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. local time.
- Debt collectors cannot use the following tactics. They cannot intimidate, pressure, or make threats to the consumer with legal action or arrest if it is not duly planned, considered, or made known to third parties, or at least talk about debts with them.
Fair Credit Reporting Act
This is another act to the rescue of the consumer. The Fair Credit Reporting Act upholds the confidentiality, discretion, and truth of information as used in creating customer credit reports. It seeks to control the distribution, collection, and utilization of “consumer credit information.” This is as provided in the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
Under this law, the credit reporting agencies are required to maintain absolute, full, and accurate files and information. They need to authenticate the numbers and provide proof of accuracy. After this is done, they need to send the credit reports to the consumers.
In other words, consumers are entitled to receive their credit reports and to take actions to validate the correctness of information contested by a customer.
The consumers are entitled to such actions under this law:
- Credit bureaus are permitted to provide credit reports only to those with a lawful business causes
Credit bureaus are not allowed to disclose any information or credit report to institutions that have no legal basis as to their request for a particular credit report information. Only entities such as insurers, employers, creditors, and government agencies are allowed to receive an individual’s credit report as part of the evaluation process.
- The consumer’s right to know regarding denied credit
In cases like denied credit, consumers have the right to know about the details of such report. With this, consumers can identify which credit bureau issued such report.
In this way, the consumer will be able to check if there has been any discrepancy.
The above list is just a nutshell of how the law sides with the consumer if he iss being harassed by debt collectors. The legal aid comes in the form of the Fair Credit Reporting Act and the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.
The intention is to help consumers lead a decent life even if they are in debt as every one has a right to live. Just because one is in debt, it does not make them a criminal in the eyes of law.
Article by Nakagava Ltd., creator of PiggyBob™, the first truly user friendly personal finance and appointment scheduling software. PiggyBob™ is an extremely convenient tool to help you keep track of your income and expenses, plus a very useful printable calendar to record all important events in your life.
