8 Consumer Protection Laws That Your Family Should Know

Consumer protection is the safeguarding of consumers of various goods and services, whether tangible or intangible. The laws help prevent illegal business practices and give a limitation to business entities from unethical business actions and other wrongs, as stated in the consumer protection act. These laws benefit your family to ensure they are lawfully protected in their consumption levels as they constitute the biggest group of consumer entities.

Fair credit reporting act

This act covers a large part of the consumer protection law faced with the task of credit reporting. Businesses endorsed with the task of credit reporting have this act stipulated to regulate their actions. The act ensures that consumers’ credit information is safely kept and records of whoever the information is shared to have been secured. Your family also has the right to ask and receive all the business’s credit information on your consumer ship of the goods and services.

Gramm-Leach-Billey act

This act is key for follow-up. It is involved in securing very private information on consumers like their addresses, security numbers, and other pieces of key information they give out. It strictly lays out a must requirement for all business entities to detail their written plan on how they are going to secure private consumers’ information and how they are going to share consumer’s information to authorized third parties only lawfully.

Children’s online privacy act

This is a law that should be made aware of families. They involve consumer touchpoints based on the collection of information on children and how that information is used by business platforms online. This act goes a long way to regulate how this kind of personal information is collected and how it will be used. This is in a bid to avoid illegal actions and fraud practices using the collected information, ensuring that the internet world provides a safer platform for children.

CAN-SPAM act

From its name, it is easy to tell that this law is supposed to protect your family from junk mails and other unsolicited communications online at all its consumer points. It comes with regulations like providing truthful information to consumers, giving an option to receivers of the information to opt-out from receiving the information, and stating the sender’s intentions and physical locations of the consumer information. Any violation of the act provides a legal ground for the pursuit of the senders by consumers.

Fair debt collection act

For consumers, the most unforgiving moment is when they cannot repay their debts and loans. This is where this act comes in place to reduce the stress that consumers face during the repayment period, trying to fairly place regulations to be followed by third-party debt collectors during the collection of the debts and loans consumers owe various business entities. Professionals at a law practice in Birmingham Alabama state that “Even if you have outstanding debt, the conduct of debt collectors must remain within the bounds of consumer protection laws.” They are required not to expose the consumer to the family members or at the workplace about the debt, avoid verbally abusing the consumer, and approaching the consumer about the debt repayment issue at reasonable hours only.

Truth in lending act

This law is strictly laid out to place regulations to short-term lenders of financial aids to consumer groups like families who, at one point in their consumer lifestyle, face a huge challenge in meeting all their necessary expenses. Short-term lenders need to provide very precise information to consumers about their lending transactions and their entire repayment plans. Truth in lending is key to ensure consumers are not deceitfully corrupted during their borrowing of money.

Telephone consumers protection act

Most consumers get stressed out when they receive persistent calls from telemarketers who try to sell them a product or advertise their products and services they offer and are on sale. With this issue being prevalent, strict regulations are put in place to prevent consumers from illegal and deceitful actions by telemarketers, including automated dialing systems and text messages and when and how the telemarketers contact the consumers.

Marketing and advertising act

Most marketers and sales agents will use deceitful and duplicitous claims to bring their products into the competitive global market to throw their products a step higher in making it an option for consumers. It has strict rules ensuring there is truth in the product names, their brands, and the pricing category and that the claims should not be misleading to consumers. 

It is now evident that these are laws that your family should know as they keenly protect the consumer’s identity and privacy especially when it comes to the sensitive information obtained at various consumer levels and also protect them against all sorts of deceitful and extreme actions that may be carried out by business entities. They securely keep in track the consumer rights made aware to consumers and consumer groups like families.