Federal Agency Interpretation

This is the text of a 2009 FTC advisory opinion dealing with a request from representatives of the debt collection industry that the FTC that action to clarify that the act of responding to a consumer dispute is not an attempt to collect a debt under the FDCPA. Further the representatives ask clarification that a consumer that sends a written dispute to a furnisher after having invoked his or her cease communication rights under the FDCPA has revoked the cease communication instruction for purposes of communicating with the furnisher to process the dispute.

This is the text of a 2008 FTC advisory opinion dealing with whether the FDCPA prohibits a debt collector from notifying a consumer of settlement options that may be available to avoid foreclosure. The opinion, with qualifications, finds such communication to be permissible.

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.