Consumer Insights
Analysis and practical guides on consumer.
40 articles, checklists, and guides on consumer law, written by the attorneys at MC Law. Every piece is general information, not legal advice—for a specific matter, contact the firm.
Handling a Defective Vehicle or a Dealer Dispute: A Practical Guide
This guide is the action sequence for a car that will not work or a dealer that will not deal fairly. It covers what to do at the very first service visit that decides the case months later, how to look up technical service bulletins and arrive prepared, when and how to send the manufacturer the written notice that most lemon claims fail without, how to revoke acceptance against the dealer instead, how to invoke the holder rule against the lender, what to do the day a dealer calls to say financing fell through, how to cancel the finance office add-ons for a refund, and when small claims beats everything else.
Home Improvement Contract and Contractor Dispute Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist runs a home improvement project from screening through final payment and, when necessary, the dispute. It sets out the eight verification steps that prevent most construction disasters, the contract terms to insist on, and the state statutory requirements to read your contract against. It covers the cancellation rights that may still be open because the required notice was never given, the preliminary notices that look like junk mail and identify everyone who can lien your house, and the lien waiver habit that prevents paying twice. It ends with the dispute sequence: the defect notice statute to check before doing anything, the free remedies that come before litigation, and the consumer protection claim that shifts fees.
Student Loan Repayment and Relief Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist runs a student loan matter from inventory to discharge. It is organized as sequences: building the loan inventory, verifying and fixing loan type, selecting a repayment plan, the annual habits that protect forgiveness, what to do when you cannot pay, escaping a default, the discharge applications worth filing, private loan defenses, servicer disputes, and scam avoidance. Deadlines and irreversible decisions are flagged. The first section is the one everything else depends on, because loan type governs every available remedy.
Air Travel and Passenger Rights: Delays, Bumping, Baggage, and Refunds
Air travel is governed by a body of federal regulation that grants passengers a small number of genuinely enforceable rights and preempts most of the state-law claims people instinctively reach for. This article explains what those rights actually are: cash compensation for involuntary denied boarding on a formula set by regulation, a refund in cash rather than a voucher when a flight is cancelled or significantly changed, mandatory refunds of ancillary fees for services not delivered, and the tarmac delay rule requiring an opportunity to deplane. It covers the contract of carriage—the document that governs everything else and that almost nobody reads—and the baggage liability limits, which differ substantially between domestic and international travel. It closes with the disability provisions governing wheelchair assistance and mobility device damage, and the Department of Transportation complaint that is the operative enforcement mechanism.
Hiring a Contractor and Handling a Construction Dispute: A Practical Guide
This guide covers a home improvement project from the first estimate through the final payment and, when necessary, the dispute that follows. It sets out the two hours of screening that prevent most construction disasters—verifying the license, calling the insurer directly, getting three bids on one written scope, and calling a reference from a project two years old. It explains the contract terms that decide how a project goes, why the payment schedule and retainage are the homeowner's only real leverage, and how change orders should work. It then covers what to do during construction, including the preliminary notices that look like junk mail and are the complete list of who can lien your house. It closes with the dispute sequence: the defect notice statute to check first, the licensing board and bond claim that are free, and the consumer protection statute that shifts fees.
Small-Dollar Credit Toolkit: Revocation Letters, License Checks, and Regulator Complaints
This toolkit contains the letters, worksheets, and scripts that get a borrower out of a payday or title loan, ordered by urgency. It opens with the ACH revocation letters to the lender and the bank and a request to reverse the NSF fees that frequently exceed the loan fees. It provides a lawfulness worksheet covering the license check, the rate cap, and the rollover rules, a transaction history request, and a rollover audit that makes the violations visible. It includes an extended payment plan demand, a credit union call script, a title loan redemption and notice demand, a repossession documentation worksheet, a Military Lending Act letter, a regulator complaint, a collection violation log, a skeleton answer to a collection suit, a credit report audit worksheet, a credit repair refund demand, and an APR calculator.
Identity Theft Response and Credit Dispute Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist is the response sequence for identity theft and for a wrong credit report. It runs from the first hour through litigation preparation: freezing, securing accounts, documenting, obtaining the identity theft report, requesting blocks rather than disputes where fraud is involved, writing a dispute that survives a perfunctory investigation, handling specialty reports, tracking reinsertion, and building a file. Deadlines are flagged, including the four-business-day block requirement and the thirty-day reinvestigation period. Every step in it is free.
Home Improvement Contracts and Contractor Disputes: Licensing, Liens, and Getting the Work Done Right
A home renovation is the largest contract most people ever sign without a lawyer, and it is governed by a body of consumer protection law that almost nobody reads until something has gone wrong. This article explains what a home improvement contract must contain under most state statutes, why the three-day right to cancel exists and how often it is silently violated, and what contractor licensing and bonding actually get you. It then covers the mechanics lien system from the homeowner's side—how a subcontractor you never met can encumber your house even after you paid the general contractor in full, what preliminary notices mean, and why lien waivers exchanged at each payment are the single most protective habit available. It closes with the remedies when work is defective or abandoned: the licensing board, the bond, the state recovery fund, the deceptive trade practices act, and the arbitration clause that may have quietly taken your day in court.
Small-Dollar Credit and Credit Repair Checklist: A Practical Checklist
This checklist gives the sequence for someone already inside a payday or title loan, starting with the step that stops the largest ongoing loss. It covers revoking the ACH authorization and stopping the bank fee cascade, the two-minute lawfulness check that in many states produces a void loan, the transaction history where rollover violations become visible, and the extended payment plan many states require lenders to offer on request. It sets out the cheaper credit available to refinance out, the title loan sequence with its redemption and notice rights, the collection threats that are unlawful, and the defenses that work in a collection lawsuit. It ends with what actually improves a credit report and the advance fee prohibition that makes most credit repair contracts unlawful.
Getting Out of a Payday or Title Loan: A Practical Guide
This guide is a sequence for someone already inside a payday or title loan, starting with the step that stops the largest ongoing loss. It explains how to revoke an ACH authorization and stop the cascade of bank fees that frequently exceed the loan fees, then how to determine in two minutes whether the loan is even lawful—the license check, the rate cap, the rollover limits, and the cooling-off period that same-day repay-and-reborrow evades. It covers requesting the transaction history where the violations become visible, the extended payment plan many states require lenders to offer, and the cheaper credit that exists to refinance out. For title loans it sets out redemption rights, pre-sale notice, surplus accounting, and breach of the peace. It closes on collection threats, lawsuits, and credit repair.
Buying a Car: Warranties, Lemon Laws, Dealer Fraud, and Financing
A car is the second largest purchase most people make and the one most likely to go wrong, because the transaction combines a complex product, a financing contract, and a sales culture built around the finance office. This article explains the warranty architecture from express and implied warranties through the Magnuson-Moss framework, what an as-is sale really means and what it cannot disclaim, how state lemon laws work and why the notice requirement matters more than the defect, revocation of acceptance as the underused alternative, the recurring dealer fraud patterns from yo-yo financing to odometer and title washing, the financing disclosures and the holder rule that lets a buyer assert claims against the lender, and how arbitration clauses reshape all of it.
Payday Loans, Title Loans, and Credit Repair: Small-Dollar Credit and Its Traps
Small-dollar credit is where the arithmetic of an annual percentage rate stops being an abstraction. This article explains how payday, title, and high-cost installment loans actually work—the fee that reads as fifteen dollars and prices as four hundred percent, the rollover cycle that turns a two-week bridge into an eight-month obligation, and the security interest in a car that makes a title loan the most dangerous of the three. It covers the state rate caps, licensing regimes, and cooling-off requirements that vary enormously, and the evasion structures built to route around them. It then addresses the Military Lending Act's thirty-six percent cap and why it matters more broadly, the credit repair industry and the federal statute prohibiting advance fees for services not yet performed, and the alternatives that exist and go unused.