Happy Financial Literacy Month! – National Consumers League

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In this economy, every month should be financial literacy month, and in our LifeSmarts program, it sort of is!.  (Especially now that our program offers year-round curriculum through our Spring Training program. But we digress.)

LifeSmarts participants have a leg up when it comes to being smart about knowing what’s you’re getting into before signing on the dotted lines. They’ve learned about how to properly handle credit and debit cards, manage a budget, and make smart shopping decisions.

It might seem difficult to apply this knowledge without the proper organizational tools.You may think that you don’t have time to review your credit card spending and see what expenses are really making a dent in your savings. You may know that your bank charges fees for your account, but not have the energy to review every statement to make sure additional fees aren’t charged.

Wish there was a Web site where you could easily view your bank account activity; keep track of how you spend your money; and get advice on how to save money based on your current spending habits? Mint.com is a personal finance and budgeting Web site that offers exactly these services for free. This service is especially great for students who will be leaving home soon and will have new budgeting responsibilities.

Teen financial literacy program receives grant from Experian – National Consumers League

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April 22, 2009

2009 state champion LifeSmarts teams en route to St. Louis for annual LifeSmarts championship, April 25-28

Contact: 202-835-3323, media@nclnet.org

Washington, D.C. — The National Consumers League (NCL) has received a $146,000 grant from Experian®, the global information services company, to help underwrite LifeSmarts (www.lifesmarts.org), NCL’s 15-year-old program that educates teens and tweens on real-world financial and consumer literacy issues.

“We are grateful for Experian’s support as we help to prepare a new generation of consumers for the challenges of the marketplace,” said Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director. “LifeSmarts is a fun, fast, and educational program, and a great vehicle for educating young consumers.”

LifeSmarts is a competitive educational program, in which teams of students begin online. Top-scorers progress to state competitions, and state champion teams meet each April to compete in the National LifeSmarts Championship. This year’s national event will be hosted by NCL, the nation’s oldest consumer advocacy organization, in St. Louis, MO.

The Experian grant will allow NCL’s LifeSmarts program to forge a new partnership with Family, Career, and Community Leaders of America (FCCLA) to bring LifeSmarts to its 220,000 student members nationwide. Also, for the first time this year, NCL will award each of the five students from the 2009 National LifeSmarts champion team—to be determined in St. Louis—a $1,000 academic scholarship, thanks to the grant from Experian.

“Experian is proud to support LifeSmarts and to help NCL expand the program through partnership with FCCLA,” said Rod Griffin, Director of Public Education for Experian. “LifeSmarts competitors will soon be heading off to college or into the workplace where they will be faced with critical financial decisions that can affect the rest of their lives. The LifeSmarts program sets them on the path to a lifetime of success by equipping them with the financial knowledge and consumer skills they need to make informed, responsible choices.”

2009 National LifeSmarts Championship Headed to St. Louis

Consumer savvy teens representing 30 states will compete at the national event. Throughout the 2008-2009 program year, more than 22,000 teens competed online for a chance to represent their states at Nationals. Players answered more than 3 million consumer questions in the online competition.

EVENT INFO

April 25-28, 2009

Millennium Hotel, St. Louis, 200 S. 4th Street, St. Louis, MO. 63102-1804
Final match: Tuesday, April 28, 10:45 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. Central
Awards Ceremony: 12:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. Central

WEBCAST AND WEB COVERAGE

Parents and teachers can follow the action at the official 2009 National LifeSmarts Championship blog (www.lifesmartsnationals.blogspot.com).

The semi-final and final competition matches will be streamed live at www.nextgenweb.org. Visit NextGenWeb for information, vidcasts, podcasts, webinars, and a blog that focus on how broadband technology can benefit the U.S. economy, consumers, health care, education, and the environment.

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About LifeSmarts and the National Consumers League

LifeSmarts is a program of the National Consumers League. State coordinators run the programs on a volunteer basis. For more information, visit: www.lifesmarts.org, email lifesmarts@nclnet.org, or call the National Consumers League’s communications department at 202-835-3323. The National Consumers League, founded in 1899, is America’s pioneer consumer organization. Our mission is to protect and promote social and economic justice for consumers and workers in the United States and abroad. For more information, visit www.nclnet.org.

Consumers: CD Freedoms Should Extend to DVDs – National Consumers League

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By Sally Greenberg, Executive Director, National Consumers League

With frightening financial headlines greeting us every morning and tucking us into bed at night, many of us consumers have started taking a long, hard look at the entertainment “extras” in our budget that are often so difficult to sacrifice.

Amidst the backdrop of this troubled economy, the National Consumers League recently commissioned a survey of Americans’ entertainment habits and interests, specifically those related to their use of DVDs. In this environment, when consumer satisfaction should be more important than ever to the businesses that rely on their patronage, we wanted to find out what consumers want when it comes to how they can use their DVDs.

For years, consumers have been able to freely copy and back up the content on their compact disc collections to their hard drives and other devices. This freedom didn’t come without struggle – remember the last decade of lawsuits and consumer fear involving the sharing and copying of music files? But, in the end, consumers’ interests won out, and the freedom and mobility that consumers enjoy today with their digital music files has changed the way we travel, relax, entertain, and express ourselves.

Given the growing affordability of hard drives with the capacity to store more music and movie files than ever before, we wanted to examine whether consumers’ expectations from the CD market are translating to the consumer DVD market. We can copy our CDs; how far off are DVDs?

Consumers are currently limited by digital rights management (DRM) restrictions on most DVDs. Without illiegal ripping software, we can’t currently save the contents of most DVDs to our computers, whether for backup purposes or simply to access our DVD libraries without carrying around the actual discs (the mean number of DVDs in consumers’ collections was 77.8 discs). Some “expanded” editions of DVDs come with the ability to save an additional copy to a computer, but these editions generally come with a higher price tag.

We commissioned the study to examine consumers’ opinions related to the entertainment content stored in their DVD collections, and *what we found was that consumers overwhelmingly want to do more with the DVDs they purchase. Consumers nearly unanimously think they should be able to back-up their DVDs onto computers or other devices in order to preserve their collections. Many of them, especially those with kids at home, have had to replace lost or damaged DVDs, and more than half of respondents were “bothered” that they don’t currently have the ability to back-up their DVDs.

And in an economy that is already struggling, the habits of many consumers in our survey may indicate a market slow-down ahead: more than half of respondents (55 percent) said that they are currently purchasing fewer DVDs than they did a year ago. And four in ten (41 percent) said they expect to purchase fewer DVDs one year from now.

If our entertainment budgets are shrinking, it’s more important than ever to get value from the DVDs we already own. The entertainment industry would be wise to pay attention to the attitudes and purchasing desires of the typical American consumer, who, according to our survey, is very interested in being able to back-up his or her collection. In our survey, 41 percent said the ability to save a copy of their DVDs would make their DVD collections more valuable, and 40 percent said it might cause them to buy more DVDs.

Consumers have grown accustomed to being able to do what they want, when they want, with the music products they’ve purchased, and now they’re expecting to have the same freedom with the DVDs they own. With more consumers turning to free Internet sources of entertainment, the DVD market may be in for tough times ahead. In an economy like ours, what better time than now to help consumers get more bang for their buck from products and services that may otherwise be the first to go when they are forced to tighten their belts.

Sally Greenberg is executive director of the National Consumers League, a nonprofit consumer and worker advocacy group headquartered in Washington, DC. She can be reached at sallyg@nclnet.org.

 

*Links are no longer active as the original sources have removed the content, sometimes due to federal website changes or restructurings.

LifeSmarts = Real Life 101 – National Consumers League

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Since we’re counting the days until the 2009 National LifeSmarts Championship kicks off in St. Louis, we thought this would be a great time to focus on the types of topics covered by NCL’s LifeSmarts program — and the types of pro-consumer tools it arms its participants and alumni with.

Consumer Rights and Responsibilities: Country of Origin Labeling

A few weeks ago, the new COOL (Country of Origin Labeling) requirements went into effect. This means most fresh meat products and some types of chicken will require a label that tells you what country the product is from. Learn more about this important change at the official COOL Web site.

Personal Finance: New Student Loan Proposal

The new COOL requirements are not the only recent government measure that may impact your life as a consumer. A recent proposal by the Obama administration may impact one of the most important consumer decisions of all – your education. Find out about the New Student Loan Proposal and what it could mean for your future education financing plans.

Consumer, public interest leaders to wireless industry: Forgive early termination fees for unemployed subscribers – National Consumers League

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April 21, 2009

Wireless industry leaders urged to help consumers facing economic crisis by eliminating pricey contract cancellation fees

Contact: 202-835-3323, media@nclnet.org

Washington, DC, April 21, 2009 — Leaders of the nation’s consumer and public interest organizations today called on the heads of the wireless industry to immediately suspend charging early termination fees (ETF’s) on any subscriber who lose their jobs. Recent reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate that the jobless rate nationally is at 8.5 percent, and most economists expect that number to rise above 10 percent in the coming months. Millions more are facing involuntary furloughs and underemployment or have ceased looking for work altogether. With this in mind, consumer and public interest leaders, in a letter to the wireless industry, are urging the wireless industry to take the pro-consumer step of allowing subscribers who have become unemployed to cancel their service contracts without incurring penalties that could add to their financial burdens.

The letter was signed by Consumer Action, the Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition, Media Access Project and the National Consumers League.

“As the unemployment rate approaches ten percent, millions of consumers need to find ways to save money due to job loss or having their working hours reduced,” said Sally Greenberg, National Consumers League Executive Director. “For many of these consumers, a big expense is wireless phone service. Unfortunately they are often locked in to expensive services that they can’t afford to keep, but also can’t afford to cancel due to hefty early termination fees. The wireless industry can help such consumers by allowing them to cancel their contracts without incurring the financial burden of ETF’s.”

ETF’s vary by carrier but can cost consumers upwards of $150 per line of service. For consumers on multiple-line “family” plans, being unable to pay for a service plan can threaten them with ETF’s of several hundred dollars or more. The consumer and public interest leaders noted that wireless devices can be essential links for unemployed and underemployed to their support networks and prospective employers. As such, they further urged the wireless industry leaders to allow subscribers who request it to migrate from unaffordable service plans to plans with lower monthly service fees or prepaid plans, again without incurring ETF’s.

“With this small change in policies, wireless phone carriers could offer big help to struggling households reeling from job losses,” said Linda Sherry, director of national priorities, Consumer Action. ”It is also a positive public relations move that will build customer loyalty in the long run. It is surprising the companies didn’t think of it first.”

“Cell phones can play a vital role in people’s lives, but consumers who are in perilous financial situations should not be penalized for their efforts to trim their expenses and get their household budgets in line,” said Charles Shafer, president of the Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition. “We urge the wireless industry to waive the ETF’s for those who have lost their jobs.”

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About the National Consumers League

Founded in 1899, the National Consumers League is America’s pioneer consumer organization. Its mission is to protect and promote social and economic justice for consumers and workers in the United States and abroad. NCL is a private, nonprofit membership organization. For more information, visit www.nclnet.org.

About Consumer Action

Consumer Action (www.consumer-action.org) is a national non-profit organization founded in San Francisco in 1971. During its more than three decades, Consumer Action has served consumers nationwide by advancing consumer rights, referring consumers to complaint-handling agencies through its free hotline, publishing educational materials in Chinese, English, Korean, Spanish, Vietnamese and other languages, advocating for consumers in the media and before lawmakers, and comparing prices on credit cards, bank accounts, telephone plans and other consumer goods and services.

About the Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition

Founded in 2000, MCRC is a non-profit organization focused on fairness and safety in the marketplace. MCRC seeks to advance and protect the interests of Maryland consumers through research, education and advocacy. Our members include individuals and organizations that support the interests of consumers. www.mdconsumers.org

About Media Access Project

Media Access Project (MAP) is a non-profit advocacy organization dedicated to promoting the public’s First Amendment right to access a diverse marketplace of ideas in the electronic mass media of today and tomorrow. For over 35 years, MAP has promoted the public interest before the FCC and the Courts, advocating for an open and diverse media that protects the free flow of information, promotes universal and equitable access, and encourages vibrant public discourse on critical issues facing our society. For more information please visit our website at www.mediaaccess.org.

We <3 You, Earth! - National Consumers League

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With Earth Week upon us and the official celebration of Earth Day just around the corner, many consumers are taking time to participate in observances and practices that remind us of the importance of treating our planet right.

Want a resource that summarizes the concepts and terms you need to know to understand climate change? Confused by the conflicting information you hear about our impact on climate, and climate’s impact on us? Recently, several scientific organizations, educational institutions, and government agencies have introduced a new Climate Change Literacy Brochure for the public that is easy to use and reflects the current consensus of these organizations on climate change issues.

This is a good resource that many of the 2009 LifeSmarts state champion teams across the country may be using this week to prepare for the 2009 National LifeSmarts Championship! The Environment is one of 5 major topic areas that the LifeSmarts program covers, and if we know our LifeSmarts participants, we know they are probably trying to squeeze as many last-minute hours of studying as possible before they face off in competition. We’re getting ready to head to St. Louis this week for our annual national event. Later this week, check back here and at our official LifeSmarts Web site to see how the competition unfolds!

Health Reform … What’s in Store? – National Consumers League

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by Mimi Johnson, Health Policy Associate

As Governor Kathleen Sebelius’ confirmation hearings continue, there is increased buzz around town about what’s in store for health reform.

Prevention!

We could not be more excited that prevention is one of the key areas of concern for lawmakers. In fact, contact your Senators and Representative and let them know that you support prevention and that it should be included in health reform. At a recent meeting, a Hill insider mentioned that there are still a lot of politicians out there who don’t value putting resources towards prevention. We do. It’s really important that the government focus on prevention because it will require changes in infrastructure – making it safer to go for a walk through town; easier to access healthy, fresh foods; and have more quality face time with our health care practitioners.

Secondary and Tertiary Prevention?

One of the more exciting prospects of health reform is the idea of including *secondary and tertiary prevention. This means that the government – from Congress and federal agencies down to the local community health system – will work to ensure that we can better manage our health, including any chronic conditions we might have. Secondary prevention focuses on detecting a disease in its earliest state, while *tertiary prevention aims to manage chronic conditions or illnesses to improve a patient’s quality of life.If we can promote prevention – in all forms, we can help save more lives and money.Secondary and tertiary prevention can help patients to better understand and utilize the health care system in addition to helping them take medication safely and appropriately.*

With a new leader at HHS, and a country ready for more than just another Band-Aid fix, the time is now for *health reform. We are hopeful that this comprehensive reform will help us change the way we think about our health.

*Stay tuned – we’ll soon have more information about our developing medication adherence campaign, which is a prime example of secondary prevention.

 

*Links are no longer active as the original sources have removed the content, sometimes due to federal website changes or restructurings.

An Ounce of Prevention Worth a Pound of Cure for Mortgage Fraud – National Consumers League

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By John Breyault, Vice President of Public Policy, Telecommunications and Fraud

Last week, the U.S. Treasury Department, along with the Federal Trade Commission, Department of Justice, *Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the *Attorney General of Illinois announced an unprecedented crackdown on mortgage fraud and foreclosure rescue scams. The State of Illinois filed two lawsuits and the FTC announced five new enforcement actions against companies engaged in fraudulent mortgage modification and foreclosure rescue schemes. The FTC warned dozens more companies about potentially deceptive trade practices related to such activities.

The bursting of the housing bubble has left millions of Americans searching for ways to deal with the increased costs of adjustable-rate or “balloon” loans and stave off foreclosure. Unfortunately, fraudsters see this misery as an opportunity to take advantage of desperate victims and fleece them as exactly the time these consumers can least afford it. The unfortunate reality of these scams is that thousands of consumers end up financially ruined and often out on the street.

While we certainly welcome stepped-up enforcement by federal and state authorities, we believe that such action often comes too late for victims of such scams. Who knows how many consumers could have avoiding becoming fraud statistics if they had been armed with information to help them spot these scams and take advantage of the legitimate resources available to help them negotiate with their creditors and avoid foreclosure?

With this in mind, NCL last week called on the nation’s leaders to place a renewed emphasis on consumer education to empower consumers to avoid mortgage modification, foreclosure rescue, and other forms of mortgage fraud.

Said NCL Executive Director Sally Greenberg:

“Recent multi-agency federal and state actions to tackle the threat of mortgage fraud are a positive step in helping to protect consumers. Fraudsters should be apprehended and brought to justice. All too often, however, victims of these schemes have already been ruined financially by the time mortgage fraud rings are broken up by law enforcement. Now, more than ever, enforcement should be tied to prevention by devoting more resources to educating consumers through churches, community centers, senior centers, schools, and libraries. This is needed particularly in vulnerable low-income, elderly, and immigrant communities, whose members are frequent targets for mortgage fraud.”

Last week, the Treasury Department stated that from July 2002 to June 2008, it had received nearly 180,000 reports suspicious activity related to potential mortgage fraud. While these statistics are shocking, it is likely that thousands more instances of such fraud go unreported. Enforcement against scammers is an important part of the fight against mortgage fraud, but it should not be the only part. For the vast majority of consumers, their homes are the biggest investment they will ever make. They should be empowered with information, through coordinated widely available consumer education efforts to avoid losing those investments to scam artists.

 

*Links are no longer active as the original sources have removed the content, sometimes due to federal website changes or restructurings.

Gift Card Holder’s Bill of Rights – National Consumers League

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The National Consumers League has been joined by Consumer Action and the Montgomery County, Md, Office of Consumer Protection to call on the gift card industry to ease the burden on consumers by lifting expiration dates, lowering fees, and more.

1. Gift cards should have no expiration dates.
Gift card holders have the expectation that their cards are as good as cash at a retailer. They should be able to use their cards regardless of when they received the card

2. The value of a gift cards should not be reduced by arbitrary fees that diminish a card’s value.
The funds available on gift cards are often reduced significantly by a variety of postsale fees (called “dormancy,” “inactivity,” or “maintenance” fees, depending on the card) if the value of the card has not been exhausted within six to 12 months of purchase. We believe the funds stored in these cards should be available to consumers to pay for goods and services, not the card issuer’s administrative costs.

3. Fees assessed on a card purchase should not exceed five dollars or ten percent of the value of the card.
The processing charges or sales fee charged at the point of sale for gift cards should be reasonable and consistent with the expected costs incurred by the card issuer to market the card and service the card post-sale.

4. Card replacement fees should not exceed two dollars or ten percent of the purchase price of the card, whichever is less.
Card holders lose cards for a variety of reasons, including theft. Fees associated with replacing the card should be reasonable.

5. Cards with a balance of five dollars or less should be redeemable for cash with no fee.
Many cards are unusable when consumers attempt to use them to make purchases greater than the value of a card. Many retailers are unable or unwilling to attempt a “split tender” transaction to address this issue. As such, we believe that consumers should be able to redeem gift cards with a remaining value of $5 or less for cash, without a fee.

6. Balance inquiries should not deduct from the value of the card.
Consumers may need to check the remaining balance on their cards from time to time. Doing so should not reduce the value of the card itself.

7. Terms and conditions should be clearly disclosed.
Consumers should be made aware of any fees associated with a card before purchasing it. Such terms and conditions should be viewable on the card itself, the card’s packaging, in-store display, and on an easily accessible Web site.

8. Unused funds should not go into the card issuers’ pockets, but should accrue to a state fund to be used for the specific benefit of consumers.
The residual value of lost or unused cards falling under states’ unclaimed property laws should be used to benefit consumers, not to the bottom lines of big banks and retailers. Appropriate uses of such monies would be a fund to compensate victims of consumer fraud, grants to non-profit organizations fighting fraud, and support for state programs to educate the public about consumer fraud.

9. Funds from the sale of gift cards should be segregated and held in trust accounts so as to be automatically honored in the event of the cards issuer’s bankruptcy.
Recent retailer bankruptcies have resulted in consumers being unable to use their gift cards or only being able to redeem t heir cards for pennies on the dollar. Consumers who purchase gift cards have, in effect, prepaid for goods and services and their purchases should be honored, regardless of the bankruptcy status of the card issuer.

10. These rights should cover any electronic gift card with a banked dollar value.
Consumers generally do not differentiate between gifts cards usable at a single retailer or multiple retailers. The rights afforded them should be consistent regardless of the issuer of the card.

Prevention, not just enforcement, needed to curb growth in foreclosure rescue scams – National Consumers League

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 April 10, 2009

National Consumers League praises Obama Administration for commitment to enforcement, calls for renewed focus on consumer education

Contact: 202-835-3323, media@nclnet.org

Washington, DC — With home foreclosures at an unprecedented and historic high, millions of consumers are more vulnerable than ever to mortgage fraud and bogus foreclosure rescue schemes, warns the National Consumers League (NCL), which has long tracked illegal scams through NCL’s Fraud Center. On Monday, the Obama Administration announced a wide-ranging multi-agency effort to bring loan modification fraud and foreclosure rescue scams under control. As the nation undertakes a much-needed crackdown, it is equally important that there be a renewed focus on consumer education to help consumers avoid falling victim to these criminals in the first place.

Mortgage fraud costs the lending industry an estimated $4-6 billion annually, according to the Prieston Group. At a time when consumer’s pocketbooks are stretched thinner each day due to a worsening economy, homeowners are increasingly vulnerable to fraudsters offering them a way to avoid losing their homes. Unfortunately, for tens of thousands of Americans, these schemes almost always end up with the consumer losing money, having their credit further damaged, and losing their biggest investment: their homes.

“We welcome the recent actions by the federal and state governments to tackle the growing threat of mortgage fraud,” said Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director. “However, vigorous enforcement actions – while a critical component of fighting fraud – must be combined with education to help consumers recognize and avoid these scams in the first place.”

Mortgage modification and foreclosure rescue scams come in a variety of guises, but some of the common ones include:


  • Upfront Fee Scam. Fraudster promises, for an upfront fee, to negotiate with homeowner’s bank to pay down back-payments, but scammer ultimately takes the money and disappears.

  • Lease-back or repurchase scams. Con artists promise to pay a mortgage and lease it back to their victims if the consumer signs over the deed. The scammer then raises the rent, sells the house, steals equity, or even evicts the tenant.

  • Refinance fraud. Victim signs over ownership of the house, thinking that they are signing documents for a new loan at a lower payment level.

  • Bankruptcy schemes. The scammer encourages the victim to stop paying their mortgage and offers to file bankruptcy for the consumer, for a fee.

  • Appraisal fraud. An appraiser – in cahoots with a bank – overvalues the home, then secures an unnecessarily large loan at high interest rates for the homebuyer. Another scenario is that the appraiser undervalues the home in order to justify a short sale and subsequent re-sale at market value for profit.

“Recent multi-agency federal and state actions to tackle the threat of mortgage fraud are a positive step in helping to protect consumers,” said Greenberg. “Fraudsters should be apprehended and brought to justice. All too often, however, victims of these schemes have already been ruined financially by the time mortgage fraud rings are broken up by law enforcement. Now, more than ever, enforcement should be tied to prevention by devoting more resources to educating consumers through churches, community centers, senior centers, schools, and libraries. This is needed particularly in vulnerable low-income, elderly, and immigrant communities, whose members are frequent targets for mortgage fraud.”

Consumers who suspect they may be targets of mortgage fraud have a range of resources available to them. NCL’s step-by-step guide to financing the purchase of a home, including critical information for protecting yourself against fraud, is available online at www.mortgagetown.org. The federal government has made numerous resources available online for consumers facing foreclosure, including the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s “Guide to Avoiding Foreclosure” and HUD’s new www.MakingHomeAffordable.gov Web site, as well a toll-free foreclosure counseling assistance hotline at 1-888-995-HOPE.

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About the National Consumers League

Founded in 1899, the National Consumers League is America’s pioneer consumer organization. Its mission is to protect and promote social and economic justice for consumers and workers in the United States and abroad. NCL is a private, nonprofit membership organization. For more information, visit www.nclnet.org.