Federal Agency Interpretation

This is the text of a 2007 FTC advisory opinion dealing with whether the FDCPA prohibits a debt collector from notifying a consumer who disputed a debt that the collector has ceased its collection efforts and concluding that it does not.

This document reprints the FTC’s 1988 Staff Commentary on the FDCPA, providing interpretations to most FDCPA provisions.

This CFPB compliance aid provides questions and answers pertaining to compliance with the Debt Collection Rule concerning limited content messages and telephone call frequency, including  telephone call frequency presumptions, rebutting those presumptions and excluded calls from the telephone call frequency provision.

This CFPB compliance aid provides detailed instructions concerning debt collector disclosure of validation information that must be provided to a consumer in conjunction with or shortly after the first debt collector communication with the consumer.

The CFPB is issuing this compliance bulletin and policy guidance to remind debt collectors of their obligation to comply with the FDCPA’s  prohibition on false, deceptive, or misleading representations or means in connection with the collection of any debt and unfair or unconscionable means to collect or attempt to collect any debt, and to remind consumer reporting agencies and information furnishers to comply with the Fair Credit Reporting Act’s accuracy and dispute resolution requ

This Commentary is the vehicle by which the staff of the Federal Trade Commission

publishes its interpretations of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA). It is a guideline

intended to clarify the staff interpretations of the statute, but does not have the force or effect of

statutory provisions. It is not a formal trade regulation rule or advisory opinion of the Commission,

and thus is not binding on the Commission or the public.

Because the Commission’s Guides Against Debt Collection Deception have been superseded by, and submitted in, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), the Commission has determined that it is in the public interest to eliminate them. The Guides were adopted in 1967 to codify the results of many debt collection cases brought by the Commission against debt collectors and creditors under Section 5(a)(1) of the Federal Trade Commission Act (FTCA).

The FTC has learned that, to recover on a decedent’s debts, some debt collectors contact the decedent’s relatives, although these relatives may have no authority to pay the debts from the decedent’s estate and no legal obligation to pay the debts from their own assets. By contacting persons who are not specified in Section 805 of the FDCPA, and by engaging in practices that may deceive those persons about their obligations, these debt collectors may be violating the FDCPA.The FTC will forebear from enforcing Section 805(b) of the FDCPA, 15 U.S.C.

This bulletin describes certain acts or practices related to the collection of consumer debt that could, depending on the facts and circumstances, constitute UDAAPs prohibited by the Dodd-Frank Act. Whether conduct like that described in this bulletin constitutes a UDAAP may depend on additional facts and analysis.

In response to recent practices observed during supervisory examinations and enforcement investigations, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or Bureau) issues this bulletin to provide guidance to creditors, debt buyers, and third-party collectors about compliance with the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) and sections 1031 and 1036 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 (Dodd-Frank Act) when making representations about the impact that payments on debts in collection may have on credit reports and credit scores.