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Quick analysis: Keep on keeping on.

February 2019 showed the new year is, so far, continuing the trends from 2018. FCRA, CFPB complaints are up. TCPA, FDCPA complaints are down.

BBB reporting lags too far behind the other categories to make any sense in the grid, but year over year complaints against creditors and debt collectors are growing very aggressively.

In other news, putative class actions were pretty typical last month with 21.5% of FDCPA, 30.3% of TCPA and 6.5% of FCRA lawsuits filed that way.

About 32% of all plaintiffs who filed suit last month had filed at least once before.

And finally, for the second month in a row Delaware FCRA attorney Antranig Garibian represented more consumers than anyone else (49). He holds the crown for most lawsuits of the year as well, with 100 consumers represented.

Is your collection agency or call center protected
against serial litigants? Read more Here!

Current Month: Previous Month: Previous
Year:		 Year to Date: Year to
Date Comp:
Feb 01, 2019
Feb 28, 2019		 Jan 01, 2019
Jan 31, 2019		 Feb 01, 2018
Feb 28, 2018		 Jan 01, 2019
Feb 28, 2019		 Jan 01, 2018
Feb 28, 2018
BBB  1011 3008 -66.4% 6307 -84.0% 4019 12252 -67.2%
BCFP  3731 3163 18.0% 4534 -17.7% 6894 9530 -27.7%
FDCPA  660 717 -7.9% 789 -16.3% 1377 1603 -14.1%
FCRA  386 349 10.6% 421 -8.3% 735 730 0.7%
TCPA  264 302 -12.6% 297 -11.1% 566 612 -7.5%

 

Complaint Statistics:

1011 consumers filed BBB complaints, 3731 consumers filed BCFP complaints, and about 1169 consumers filed lawsuits under consumer statutes from Feb 01, 2019 to Feb 28, 2019.

  • 1011 BBB Complaints
  • 3731 BCFP Complaints
  • 660 FDCPA, 142 Class Action (21.5%)
  • 264 TCPA, 80 Class Action (30.3%)
  • 386 FCRA, 25 Class Action (6.5%)

Litigation Summary (scroll down for BBB and BCFP data):

  • Of those cases, there were about 1169 unique plaintiffs (including multiple plaintiffs in one suit).
  • Of those plaintiffs, about 379, or (32%), had sued under consumer statutes before.
  • Combined, those plaintiffs have filed about 1832 lawsuits since 2001
  • Actions were filed in 163 different US District Court branches.
  • About 765 different collection firms and creditors were sued.

The top courts where lawsuits were filed:

  • 65 Lawsuits: Illinois Northern District Court – Chicago
  • 47 Lawsuits: Delaware District Court – Wilmington
  • 44 Lawsuits: Georgia Northern District Court – Atlanta
  • 43 Lawsuits: Pennsylvania Eastern District Court – Philadelphia
  • 42 Lawsuits: Florida Middle District Court – Tampa
  • 40 Lawsuits: California Central District Court – Western Division – Los Angeles
  • 36 Lawsuits: Indiana Southern District Court – Indianapolis
  • 34 Lawsuits: New York Eastern District Court – Brooklyn
  • 34 Lawsuits: New York Eastern District Court – Central Islip
  • 32 Lawsuits: New Jersey District Court – Newark

The most active consumer attorneys were:

  • Representing 49 Consumers: ANTRANIG N GARIBIAN
  • Representing 28 Consumers: NATHAN CHARLES VOLHEIM
  • Representing 26 Consumers: MITCHELL L PASHKIN
  • Representing 25 Consumers: JONATHAN FORREST RABURN
  • Representing 23 Consumers: YAAKOV SAKS
  • Representing 22 Consumers: MICHAEL PAUL SMITH
  • Representing 22 Consumers: MELISSA LYNN ENGLISH
  • Representing 22 Consumers: MEGAN AILEEN BENEVENTO
  • Representing 22 Consumers: VERONICA BYAM NANNIS
  • Representing 22 Consumers: TAXIARCHIS HATZIDIMITRIADIS

Statistics Year to Date:

  •  2284 total lawsuits for 2019, including:

  • 1377 FDCPA
  • 735 FCRA
  • 566 TCPA

Number of Unique Plaintiffs for 2019: 2336 (including multiple plaintiffs in one suit)

The most active consumer attorneys of the year:

  • Representing 100 Consumers: ANTRANIG N GARIBIAN
  • Representing 61 Consumers: NATHAN CHARLES VOLHEIM
  • Representing 52 Consumers: TAXIARCHIS HATZIDIMITRIADIS
  • Representing 50 Consumers: YAAKOV SAKS
  • Representing 44 Consumers: DAVID SCOTT KLAIN
  • Representing 43 Consumers: MITCHELL L PASHKIN
  • Representing 42 Consumers: CRAIG B SANDERS
  • Representing 41 Consumers: DAVID H KRIEGER
  • Representing 38 Consumers: DAVID W HEMMINGER
  • Representing 37 Consumers: JOHN THOMAS STEINKAMP

——————————————————————————————————-

Is your collection agency or call center protected
against serial litigants? Read more Here!

BBB Complaint Statistics:

There were a total of 1011 BBB complaints from Feb 01, 2019 to Feb 28, 2019. That is down -66.4% from last month.

The types of companies being complained about were:

  • 757 collections-agencies (75%)
  • 134 credit+reporting (13%)
  • 120 banks (12%)

The categories of complaints filed were:

  • 751 Billing/Collection Issues (74%)
  • 235 Problems with Product/Service (23%)
  • 16 Advertising/Sales Issues (2%)
  • 6 Delivery Issues (1%)
  • 3 Guarantee/Warranty Issues (0%)

The dispositions of these complaints are:

  • 677 The business addressed the issues within the complaint, but the consumer either a) did not accept the response, OR b) did not notify BBB as to their satisfaction. (67%)
  • 291 The complainant verified the issue was resolved to their satisfaction. (29%)
  • 21 The business failed to respond to the dispute. (2%)
  • 18 BBB is unable to locate the business. (2%)
  • 4 The business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good faith effort to resolve it. (0%)

——————————————————————————————————-
BCFP Complaint Statistics:

There were 3731 complaints filed against debt collectors from Feb 01, 2019 to Feb 28, 2019.

Total number of debt collectors complained about: 757

The types of debt behind the complaints were:

  • 1074 Other debt (29%)
  • 855 Credit card debt (23%)
  • 753 I do not know (20%)
  • 609 Medical debt (16%)
  • 132 Auto debt (4%)
  • 117 Payday loan debt (3%)
  • 70 Federal student loan debt (2%)
  • 63 Mortgage debt (2%)
  • 58 Private student loan debt (2%)

Here is a breakdown of complaints:

  • 1669 Attempts to collect debt not owed (45%)
  • 763 Written notification about debt (20%)
  • 462 Communication tactics (12%)
  • 367 Took or threatened to take negative or legal action (10%)
  • 365 False statements or representation (10%)
  • 105 Threatened to contact someone or share information improperly (3%)

The top five subissues were:

  • 862 Debt is not yours (23%)
  • 510 Didnt receive enough information to verify debt (14%)
  • 387 Debt was result of identity theft (10%)
  • 350 Debt was paid (9%)
  • 303 Attempted to collect wrong amount (8%)

The top states complaints were filed from are:

  • 505 Complaints: TX
  • 413 Complaints: CA
  • 366 Complaints: FL
  • 210 Complaints: GA
  • 201 Complaints: NY
  • 159 Complaints: IL
  • 128 Complaints: OH
  • 116 Complaints: NC
  • 103 Complaints: VA
  • 90 Complaints: PA

The status of the month’s complaints are as follows:

  • 2774 Closed with explanation (74%)
  • 441 In progress (12%)
  • 422 Closed with non-monetary relief (11%)
  • 75 Untimely response (2%)
  • 19 Closed with monetary relief (1%)
  • This includes 3606 (97%) timely responses to complaints, and 125 (3%) untimely responses.

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Individual Search Engine


Instantly and easily search our proprietary database for any lawsuit participant – Plaintiff, Defendant or Attorney.

In the results, we’ll show you the full consumer litigation history of any participant, including the “docket data” (who, what, why, where, when) and – in many cases – we can even provide a copy of their actual filed lawsuits.

You can also search by phone, date range, federal/state, class action, court, statute, etc. We offer a ton of flexibility to get you the exact search result you are looking for.

The Litigant Alert Ongoing Monitoring Process


Just like our one-time batch process, but without the whole “one time” thing.

When one of your consumers files new litigation against anyone in the future, you should be the first to know. Our monitoring service can make that happen.

WebRecon can monitor your entire database (or any segment of it) for future instances of consumer litigation filed by the very consumers you are working with, right now!

It is simple to add new consumers to the watchlist, remove inactive accounts, download full reports, etc.

Best of all, we only charge you for the volume of your monitoring database – not the frequency of the searches. Search daily, weekly, every Tuesday and Friday, the 15th of each month, whatever – it is totally up to you! You won’t pay a penny more.

The Litigant Alert One-Time Batch Process


This is our flagship service. Find out why hundreds of companies won’t contact any consumers before running them through WebRecon’s Litigant Alert.

This process identifies consumers with a history of litigation quickly & easily. If they have ever filed lawsuits under FDCPA, TCPA, FCRA or similar statutes, you’ll find out here. 

WebRecon’s proprietary database is simply the most comprehensive collection of dangerous consumer litigation data in existence. 

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Litigation Context Search


This is really cool.

Our primary search engine is really designed to search for parties to litigation. Need to know more about a consumer plaintiff? That’s easy. Defendant? Check. Lawyer? No problem.

But if you need to find all 1099C lawsuits filed in July 2020… not so much.

Which is why we developed the Context Search. We have pulled out and indexed the full text from over 140k consumer lawsuits and made them available to you in a search engine, with more than 1000 new lawsuits added each month. Use it to search the text of filed litigation so you can easily identify those hard-to-define trends and cases worth following.

The Litigious Consumer Phone Scrub


Would you knowingly dial a number attached to a consumer with a history of litigation? Of course not.

But thousands of companies do just that, every single day. If you’d like to know who they are, simply review the court dockets. They are the ones getting sued the most.

Sure, you can stop dialing consumers. But your marketing and operations teams might not be too excited about that plan.

Another idea? Identify the consumers most likely to sue you, based on previous litigation histories, and just don’t call them.

Identify high-risk phones quickly & easily, before you expose yourself to unnecessary risk.

Workers Comp Scrub


Workers Comp-inspired FDCPA lawsuits are growing aggressively, particularly in Florida. Only WebRecon can tell you who in your database may have a Florida Worker’s Comp case filed that could trigger litigation against you.

You can’t stop 100% of all lawsuits, but if you collect medical in Florida and you don’t have a process in place to show the court that you have a way to check every file against the Workers Comp database, then you have lost the case before it even begins.

Knock these suits out of the park with the Workers Comp Scrub.

Our Monthly Client Newsletter with The Litigant Hotsheet


Anyone can get our guest newsletter, but only clients get the version with the Litigant Hotsheet –  identifying the most active consumer Plaintiffs filing suit in jurisdictions around the country each month. Grab a coffee, shut your door and open your database to make sure you are doing all you can to stay safe.

Individual Vendor Consumer Complaint Search


Just like Vendor Monitoring, but without the monitoring. Search any business’s history of consumer complaints (Litigation, CFPB, BBB, State AG) with the click of a button! Great for on-the-fly gut checks of the companies you do business with.

Vendor Monitoring


Through vicarious liability, you can be held accountable for the bad behavior of your vendors. If they abuse consumers, for all intents and purposes, so do you. This is a big freakin’ deal!

But fear not, friend. WebRecon can track consumer litigation, CFPB, BBB and State AG Office complaints against the companies you do business with.

When a new complaint of any kind is filed against any of the companies you are monitoring, we’ll automatically push a report out to you with all of the publicly available details so you can react accordingly and if necessary, protect your interests.

API Access


We offer two powerful APIs to businesses that communicate with consumers:

  • The primary Litigious Consumer Scrub uses a combination of name, geography (and optionally SSN) to identify consumers who have filed lawsuits in the past.
  • The Litigious Consumer Phone Scrub pulls every phone number from our proprietary database of litigants and runs your phones against ours.

These APIs allow you to check your data against our database on the fly. Clients love using this to handle risk management without missing a beat in their daily workflow.