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If your debt has been turned over to a 3rd party collection agency, you need to be familiar with the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act or FDCPA.  The FDCPA governs what collection agencies can do to collect consumer debt and is enforced by the Federal Trademission (FTC), which is the U.S. consumer protection agency.  It prohibits debt collectors from using abusive, unfair or deceptive practices to collect from consumers.

A debt collector is someone who regularly collects debts owed to others.  Debt collectors include collection agencies, lawyers andpanies that buy delinquent debts and attempt to collect them.  This only applies to personal, family and household debts such as mortgage, car loan, credit card, and medical.  The PDCPA does not apply to debts incurred to run a business or topanies that are collecting for themselves, which is usually through an in-house collection department.

Here is a list of what collectors can and cannot do regarding consumer debt:

Debt collectors cannot

• Contact - Debt collectors cannot contact you before 8 AM or after 9 PM YOUR local time.  They cannot contact you at work, if you tell them orally or in writing that you aren’t allowed to accept calls there. They ca

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Tags: Collection Practices, Collection Practices Act, Fdcpa, Practices Act

I signed up for paperless billing statements from one of my credit card issuers once, but I had to turn it off because I kept forgetting to pay the bill.

Paperless statements cut down the time you spend opening, sorting through, and discarding mail, but you’d in turn spend that time checking your email, logging on to your credit card issuer’s website, then pulling up your statement.

There are both pros and cons to paperless billing statements. What do you think? Are paperless statements better than traditional credit card statements?

Tags: Billing Statements, Paperless Billing, Paperless Billing Statements, Statements

Chase is now offering 50,000 bonus points after spending $3,000 within the first 3 months of getting your Chase Sapphire Preferred card. That’s double the number of points it was previously offering, enough for 2 airline tickets or a statement credit of $500.

Redeeming Your Chase Sapphire Points
With Chase Sapphire points, you have a number of redemption options. You can convert your Chase Sapphire points into BA miles, Continental miles or Hyatt miles at a 1:1 ratio at any time you want. Point transfers are also possible to Amtrak, Priority Club and Marriott at lower conversion ratios.

With 50,000 BA miles, for instance, you can get 2 tickets within the continental United States and Canada on American Airlines. 50,000 Continental miles are also enough for 2 tickets on Air Canada, Continental, United or US Airways. 50,000 Hyatt Gold Passport points, on the other hand, can be redeemed for between 2-10 free hotel nights with no blackout dates, depending on hotel category and room type.

Alternatively, if you use Chase’s online travel portal, you can redeem your 50,000 points towards $625 worth of airfare or hotel accommodations.

For those who aren’t into travel or prefer cold hard cash, you can also redeem the 50,000 points for a $500 gift card or a $500 statement credit.

The annual fee of $95 is waived for the first year. You c

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Tags: Bonus Points, Points, Preferred Card, Sapphire Preferred Card

The news media company Reuters reports that now when customers of Bank of America miss a monthly credit card payment they may get socked with a really stiff penalty. Instead of just hitting them with the usual one-time fees and charges, Bank of America says that it may also impose much higher interest rates on future credit card purchases as a punitive measure to discourage delinquent payments.

These rates are no joke, either, because they can go as high as 30%. To put that into perspective, if you add 30% to a debt each year then the debt will more than double in just three and a half years. Imagine what that kind of additional interest could do to magnify the burden of credit card debt for those who miss a payment and wind up paying that much on their subsequent purchases or balances carried forward. The bank plans to implement the new policy in June, and the process will involve analyzing the cardholder’s credit risk profile and then determining how high the penalty rate should be. In accordance with new federal rules the bank will also give the customer at least 45 days of prior notification before the rate hike goes into effect.

A customers other risk factors, a spokeswoman said, before determining whether a penalty rate will be initiated and what the rate will be. T

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Tags: May Pay, Pay

This past week I was in San Francisco for a convention.  As I was riding to my hotel from the airport we passed several gas stations.  The price of gas was $4,79 per gallon and that was the cheap stuff.  Premium gas was well over $5,00 per gallon.  Ouch!  So, it occurred to me that I should take a departure from my normal “credit” related blogs and give you some tips on how to save money on gas.

Use other modes of transportation – Use public transportation such as bus, train or subway.  Consider walking to your destination, if at all possible.  Or, ride a bike!  San Francisco has a huge bike to work population and you don’t see many obese bike riders.  That’s probably not a coincidence.  If you can’t use alternative transport every day then try to swap out even just one day per week.

Carpool – Find someone who lives near you to carpool to work and/or to children’s activities.  Manypanies and/or cities offer services that match you with a carpool to go to work.  Another similar alternative is the ride share lot.  Many cities have ride share programs where you can park your car in a designated lot near the on-ramp of the interstate and share a ride into the city.

Gas – Use the lowest octane gas to save money. Don’t top off your gas tank as

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Tags: Gas