Though complaints about debt collectors are pouring into a federal database that tracks allegations of illegal late-night phone calls, arrest threats and other abuse, few of the complaints are likely to result in enforcement actions, the Wall Street Journal reported recently. <\/p>\n

The debt-collection industry, booming as many Americans struggle to catch up on their payments or walk away from what they owe, was the subject of a record 164,361 complaints through Dec. 8 of 2011, according to the Federal Trade Commission. <\/p>\n

The total is 17 percent higher than the 140,036 debt-collection complaints the FTC got for 2010. <\/p>\n

Since the start of 2011, though, the FTC has launched just four enforcement actions against debt-collection firms under the primary federal law used to oversee the industry. <\/p>\n

From 2005-10, the average was two cases a year. FTC officials said that the small number of enforcement actions against debt collectors is a misleading barometer of its determination to punish violators. <\/p>\n

J. Reilly Dolan, acting director of the agency’s financial-practices division, said that the FTC "is cracking down on abusive collection practices and directs its resources to go after some of the largest debt collectors."\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Though complaints about debt collectors are pouring into a federal database that tracks allegations of illegal late-night phone calls, arrest threats and other abuse, few of the complaints are likely to result in enforcement actions, the Wall Street Journal reported recently. The debt-collection industry, booming as many Americans struggle to catch up on their payments…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vujoviclaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vujoviclaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vujoviclaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vujoviclaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vujoviclaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vujoviclaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vujoviclaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vujoviclaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vujoviclaw.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}