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- Daily Digest - July 28, 2026
Daily Digest - July 28, 2026
Brought to you by: TCN | By Mike Gibb
Mike Gibb
July 28, 2026
🎂 Happy Birthday: Pete Klipa of Harvest Strategy Group, Todd Wier of Acutus Financial, and David Birulin of Ironhouse Funding LLC.
🎉 Congratulations for starting new positions: Kendall Pinotti as Vice President, Operations Strategy & Customer Solutions at OppFi.
💬 Group Text Chats are Back!
I am excited to announce that I am bringing back the group text chats. We started these last year and they were a great way for people across the industry to get to know one another better and to engage and share and collaborate with each other. Sign up this week. It’s totally free!
New Digital Communications Report
The industry is optimistic. Placements are expected to climb. Consumers, it turns out, are more ready for digital than the businesses serving them.
New AI Event!
I am thrilled to announce a new live conference I am hosting. It’s an AI conference for the credit and collection industry. It will be held in Denver this September. Check out getbrainstorming.com for more information. And watch the video below to see me showcasing my outdoor skills.
If you are interested in being a speaker at the event, click here.
275 Paragraphs Later: FDCPA Suit Over One Phone Call Seeks $35k
A four-minute phone call. A $1,758 rental car debt. And a complaint that somehow stretches to 275 numbered paragraphs, 11 counts, and a stack of exhibits, including a damages summary pegging the harm at no less than $35,000. Oh, and the call at the center of it all? The plaintiff placed it himself. A collection operation in Arizona is now facing 13 alleged FDCPA violations, plus Regulation F and state-law claims, all built on that single conversation and a validation notice the plaintiff says never arrived.
This series is sponsored by WebRecon
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Judge Rejects Attempt to Undo Arbitration Loss for Plaintiff in FCRA Case
The plaintiff submitted 56 exhibits at her arbitration hearing. The arbitrator admitted every single one of them, and she still lost on all of her FCRA and state-law claims. So she asked a federal judge in Georgia to throw out the award, arguing the arbitrator ignored critical evidence and manifestly disregarded the law. The judge's response is a reminder of just how little flexibility the Federal Arbitration Act offers, and why even a serious legal error by an arbitrator may not be enough to reopen a case.
Judge Dismisses Veteran's FDCPA Suit Against VA Debt Management Center
A veteran watching $117 come out of his disability check every month for an $8,853 debt he insists he never owed sued the VA's Debt Management Center, naming the federal building that houses it as the defendant and asking for $450,000 plus a two-year shutdown of the operation. It was his fourth lawsuit over the same benefits. The judge's ruling explains why federal courts cannot hear the case at all, no matter how the claims are dressed up, and why the FDCPA offers no path against this particular defendant.
Post-Chevron, Post-CFPB: State Enforcement Is the Story Now
Two new analyses arrive at the same conclusion from very different directions: the center of gravity in consumer financial regulation has left Washington, and it is not coming back anytime soon. State AGs of both parties are hiring former CFPB staff, coordinating multistate actions, and just extracted $45 million from one fintech across 46 states. And the end of Chevron deference may make them the dominant players in the next era of regulatory litigation. If your compliance program was built around a single federal regulator, this one is required reading.
Former CFPB Official Tapped to Lead New Jersey's Consumer Protection Agency
The pattern keeps repeating: as the CFPB pulls back, states are recruiting the Bureau's alumni to run their own enforcement shops. New Jersey is the latest, tapping a former senior CFPB official and nationally recognized consumer law scholar to lead its Division of Consumer Affairs. He helped build the Bureau's enforcement strategy in its formative years, and he says he plans to get to work on day one. Find out who is taking the reins and what his appointment signals about where the next enforcement actions may come from.
The New York Times on the Surge in Collection Suits
When The New York Times writes about debt collection, the industry should pay attention to how the story gets told. This one leans on new Pew data showing collection filings have surged past prepandemic levels in seven of eight states studied, quotes a law professor describing courts as "choking" on cases, and walks consumers through a wave of new state protections. But the industry's perspective made it into print too, along with an AI experiment in the Los Angeles courts that could change how collection claims get reviewed.
Workers Use AI Daily but Balk at Letting It Act Alone: Report
Three quarters of employees now use AI every day. So why do 61% prefer it take no independent action at all? A new global study reveals a workforce that has embraced AI but refuses to trust it unsupervised, spending an average of two hours per week just double-checking its output. For ARM firms weighing agent-assist tools against fully autonomous workflows, the findings point to a surprising conclusion: workers are not rejecting autonomy. They are rejecting something more specific.
WORTH NOTING: A look at 20 different KPIs that contact centers should be tracking ... Nine different Costco products that should be in every kitchen ... Waymo's driverless cars crash less often than cars driven by humans ... More women are drinking alcohol while pregnant ... How much, or how little, you make may be keeping you from finding true love ... People are losing up to 56 hours of sleep per year because of warmer temperatures at night ... For the fourth straight year, the best state in America is the same ... What happens to your brain when you stress about money.
Trailer Tuesday, part I
Trailer Tuesday, Part II
Webinar Recap: AI on the Phone: The Voice (and Final) Frontier
The session, sponsored by TCN, explored how voice AI is reshaping phone-based customer interactions in collections, from inbound IVRs and agent assist to outbound bots and voice analytics. Panelists emphasized both the opportunities - efficiency, compliance controls, and improved recovery - and the risks, including consumer deception, consent requirements, and carrier spam flags.
Sara Burton (Woggerman) estimated that nearly 80% of companies are using AI in some capacity, mostly inbound. Scott Hamilton noted that voice analytics are common (~50%), agent assist less so (~15–20%), and full voice bots remain rare (~5%). John Henson reminded attendees that “everything is UDAP,” underscoring the importance of disclosure. Josh Stevens added that regulators view undisclosed AI as deceptive, and consent under TCPA remains critical.
The panel agreed that consumers don’t hate AI - they hate bad AI. Good bots can rival strong human agents, but poor deployment risks frustration, regulatory scrutiny, and economic inefficiency.
🧠 Key Takeaways:
Disclose AI Use Clearly: Always inform consumers when they are interacting with AI. As one panelist’s paralegal put it, “If I’m on with an AI, I want to know it’s an AI.”
Strengthen Compliance Controls: Ensure TCPA consent, call recording disclosures, and reassigned number database checks are integrated into AI workflows.
Balance Efficiency with Consumer Trust: Avoid over-dialing and short-call patterns that trigger carrier spam flags. Build off-ramps to live agents to prevent “AI hell loops.”
Voice AI is no longer experimental—it’s embedded across the industry. The challenge is not adoption, but responsible deployment. As Sara Burton (Woggerman) noted, effectiveness matters more than sounding human. Done right, AI can double efficiency, improve compliance, and enhance customer experience. Done poorly, it risks regulatory penalties and consumer backlash.
Did you know you can get full access to all of my past webinars, along with transcripts and summaries of each, for only $29/month? Sign up to be a premium subscriber today!
The Daily Digest is sponsored by TCN
