Minnesota Consumer Rights Blog

When an asset gets repossessed, it's stressful enough even if you understand why it's happening. If you don't make your mortgage payments and they start to foreclose on your house, you know why you reached this point, but it still puts incredible pressure on you and your family. You can imagine how much worse this is when you have no idea why they're trying to repossess the asset in the first place.

For instance, maybe the tow truck shows up at your house and they begin to load up your car. While you did buy it with a loan -- you don't own it outright -- you have also been making your payments. There's no reason for you to lose your car, it's a hassle you do not have time and energy to deal with, and it's going to drastically upset your life. You may find it impossible to go to work, for instance, so that you can earn the paycheck that makes those payments possible in the first place.

There are various consumer laws in place here in Minnesota that aim to protect state residents from companies that look to create monopolies. There is also legislation on the books that protect Minnesotans from falling victim to deceptive business owners. Other laws provide consumers with a clear path for taking legal action against any negligent parties that offer a service or manufacture a product that causes them harm as well.

One piece of legislation that protects Minnesota car buyers from being defrauded is the state's lemon law. This provides consumers with an opportunity to either have their new car replaced or the purchase price refunded if it is proven to be in a state of disrepair.

Software and app developers have been hard at work during the past few years developing mobile technology aimed at curbing wrongful repossession (repo) rates of vehicles. One of the standout programs that has emerged from all of their hard work is a mobile platform that allows lenders to relay the latest loan default data to repossession agents.

One company, American Lending Solutions (ALS) Resolvion, a skip-tracing company, has pioneered efforts to come up with such a real-time data platform. It allows any repo drivers to log-in to their mobile devices to check on a car owner's loan payment progress in real-time before they hook up and tow away a vehicle.

The dating app company Match.com was sued for fraud earlier this week by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The company, which owns several other popular relationships apps such as Tindr, PlentyofFish, Hinge and OkCupid is accused of having defrauded its users into believing that they were communicating with others looking for romance. They were communicating with bots instead.

In its suit, the FTC describes how Match.com's leadership ignored the overwhelming evidence that scammers were using their apps. In its filing, the FTC outlined how as much as 30% of its new registrants in March of this year were known scammers. Many of them had a goal of advertising to or extorting from unsuspecting daters.