Predatory Products, Priced

by bam

A scam and a predatory product are not the same object, and confusing them costs people money twice. A scam is illegal on its face, and the remedy is fraud law. A predatory product is legal, sold by a licensed business under a written contract, with its price printed on the page, and the remedy is arithmetic. This course prices the legal ones. It starts with the tool the law itself requires, the annual percentage rate, which exists under the Truth in Lending Act so that two offers stated in different units can be compared, and it teaches the conversion that turns a flat fee into one. Then the small-dollar loan, where the cost is not in the first loan but in the renewal, a mechanism the Supreme Court described in a single sentence about fine print and a federal jury in New York found a lender had understated by a factor of nearly ten. Then rent-to-own, where the total of payments can approach or exceed twice the cash price, and where no annual percentage rate appears at all, because Regulation Z's definition of a credit sale turns on whether the customer agreed to pay, and a lease you may end at any time is not that agreement. Then the products that attach to money you are already owed: a tax refund that federal law holds until a stated date for the households most likely to be offered a loan against it, and overdraft, which is priced. Then the line that decides who bears a loss when money leaves an account, which is the most useful thing this course teaches. Regulation E defines an unauthorized electronic fund transfer as one initiated by someone other than you without your authority, and the error-resolution machinery, the liability caps and the burden of proof on the institution all hang on that definition being met. A transfer you were tricked into making yourself does not meet it. The course closes on who is targeted, taught from public enforcement records rather than from assertion, and on how to read one: a complaint is an allegation, a stipulated order is a settlement, and a jury verdict is a finding, and the difference matters. It gives no financial advice, prints no national rate, dates every figure, and teaches you to find your own state's rule rather than trusting a table.