Issues: Consumer Protection

   The New York State Senate today passed a bill (S.7277A), sponsoredby Senator Mark Grisanti, that would require certain retail chain stores todisclose their unit pricing in an effort to make shopping less confusingfor customers looking for the best values. The changes would only affectstores with more than $2.5 million in annual sales.

State Senator Lee M. Zeldin (R, C, I- Shirley), Chairman of the Senate Consumer Protection Committee, held a hearing today on Organized Retail Crimes (ORC).

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, organized retail theft is an industry that costs United States retailers about $30 billion per year. Supermarket losses account for $15 billion of that annual theft. Additionally state and local governments are losing out on tens of millions of dollars annually in lost sales tax and excise fee revenue.

Last week, the Consumer Protection Committee, passed a package of six bills (S.6954-A, S.6955-A, S.6956, S.6957-A, S.6958-B and S6959-A) designed to crack down on ORC. The legislation now awaits final senate approval.

Senator Patrick M. Gallivan (R,C,I – 59th District) spoke out today against the New York State Thruway Authority’s recently announced plan to increase Thruway tolls 45 percent on commercial vehicles with three or more axles.

Senator Steve Saland (R, I, C – Poughkeepsie) today announced that his bill to include theft of credit and debit card numbers within the crime of grand larceny in the fourth degree (S.1411) has passed the Senate.

“Credit card thieves continue to become more savvy and creative. In years past when shopping was always done in person in a store, a thief had to actually possess a stolen credit card to use it fraudulently,” said Senator Saland. “Now that we shop by phone and over the Internet, it’s no longer necessary to swipe your credit card to make a purchase. Surprisingly, while it is against the law to steal credit card, it is not against the law to steal a credit card number.”

With third-party debt buyers taking advantage of the courts and consumers to extract hundreds of millions of dollars a year from the lowest income New Yorkers, State Senator Jose Peralta introduced legislation to prevent debt buyers from exploiting gaps in state laws.

Consumer debt buyers have filed hundreds of thousands of debt collection lawsuits over the past few years in New York State.  They buy consumer debts for pennies on the dollar and aggressively pursue payment through the courts—often suing the wrong people or consumers who paid back their debt years before.  Even in cases where a consumer may owe money, debt buyers often sue for grossly inflated amounts, padding the debts with unauthorized fees and interest.

“We’ve all heard the horror story about someone hounded relentlessly for years by debt collectors for bills that were paid off long ago, or for payments that were never owed, or for wildly high fees that would make a loan shark proud,” said Senator Peralta.  “The thuggish tactics described are so abusive, it’s hard to imagine that sort of harassment is allowed to happen in the United States.