• What people are saying  
• PG&E CARE/FERA program cuts energy costs for eligible households 
• First four grants awarded to CBOs under financial literacy project   
• Coalition Efforts   
• CFPB Watch    
• Class Action Database: Color Factory settles over opaque ticket fees    
• About Consumer Action

What people are saying

"This training was very beneficial. These are the type of trainings needed to help make a change in underserved communities. I am excited to take what I've learned today back to the communities I serve to start eliminating barriers between clients and financial literacy and financial freedom. Amazing training!” —Chicago “Money Management 1-2-3” training participant Kishea Mitchell, Family Focus Lawndale (visit our website to learn about upcoming trainings and webinars))

PG&E CARE/FERA program cuts energy costs for eligible households

By Monica Steinisch

In last month’s INSIDER, we wrote about a new grant we received from Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), California’s largest gas and electricity provider, to increase awareness of and enrollment in a variety of PG&E financial assistance programs throughout 2025. This is our third grant from the company since 2022, enabling us to continue the effort to reduce energy poverty in California. As part of the project, we’ll be highlighting the different programs in the INSIDER, so that eligible households can apply and all readers can share the information with their community.

CARE/FERA

The California Alternate Rates for Energy (CARE) and Family Electric Rate Assistance (FERA) is a program with two paths to reduced energy bills.

CARE provides a discount of at least 20% on gas and electricity. To qualify, you and/or someone in your household must either:

• Receive benefits from one of the qualifying public assistance programs OR
• Have total gross annual household income that falls below certain levels, depending on how many people live in the household.

Other requirements are:

• Your monthly electric usage does not exceed six times the Tier 1 allowance. (The Tier 1 allowance is the lowest-priced tier of PG&E's residential electric rate plans. It's the monthly base amount of electricity that customers can use at the lowest price.The amount of the Tier 1 allowance depends on the season, heating source, and where the customer lives. Learn more here.)  
• Another person (besides your spouse) can’t claim you as a dependent on an income tax return.
• You do not share an energy meter with another home. 
• You will renew your eligibility at least every two years. 

Visit PG&E’s CARE webpage for more information and to apply.

FERA provides a discount of 18% on electricity (not gas) for eligible households.  

To qualify, your household must: 

• Consist of three or more people AND
• Not exceed the program’s income limits.

Other requirements include:

• The PG&E bill must be in your name.
• You must live at the address to which the discount applies.
•  Another person (besides your spouse) can’t claim you as a dependent on an income tax return.

Visit PG&E’s FERA webpage for more information and to apply.

CARE and FERA share one application. If you do not qualify for CARE, PG&E will check to see if you qualify for FERA. The number for both programs is 866-743-2273. 

Visit Consumer Action's “Save Money and Energy” project page for more information about the various assistance programs and links to the program applications.

For readers outside of PG&E's service area, we recommend that you ask your utility company about assistance programs, or that you get in touch with your state’s utility regulator to learn about local energy assistance programs.

First four grants awarded to CBOs under financial literacy project

By Anna Flores

We’ve just awarded the first round of mini-grants to four of the CBOs that attended our September train-the-trainer—part of the grassroots financial literacy project we launched last year. The grantees represent the many groups doing vital work in and around Philadelphia.

Last year, Consumer Action announced a partnership with Walmart to host three regional financial literacy train-the-trainer events. As previously reported in INSIDER, training participants (staff members from local community-based organizations) would be invited to submit an application for their organization to receive a $3,000 grant from Consumer Action to support financial health education workshops in their local communities using Consumer Action’s Money Management 1-2-3 curriculum. Four CBOs from each of the three regional trainings would receive the grants, for a total of $36,000. We’ve just awarded the first round of grants to attendees of our September training, held in Philadelphia. 

We are pleased to announce that the grant recipients are:

• Clarifi
• Families Achieving Success Together (F.A.S.T.)
• HACE
• Making Change, Inc.

Congratulations to the grantees, who are doing vital and impactful work in and around Philadelphia!  We appreciate the opportunity to support their work through this project.

Four of the organizations that attended our second regional event, held in Chicago in November, will be selected for grants this month. Look for that announcement in an upcoming issue of INSIDER.

Our third regional event in the series will take place in Boston on Feb. 25. If your organization is in the Boston area and you’d like to receive an invitation to attend the next train-the-trainer, contact Nelson Santiago at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Consumer Action’s Nelson Santiago, one of our outreach team members, kicks off the Chicago event

At each training, our outreach staff and a lineup of distinguished speakers introduce participants to our newly updated Money Management 1-2-3 curriculum and share invaluable strategies and best practices for community financial education. 

 

Guest presenter Heath Carelock, of CARE Financial Impact, addresses how relationships influence our financial decisions

We are pleased to report that Walmart has committed to continuing the program into 2025, with three additional regional events. Be on the lookout for an announcement about the added locations for this year. We might be coming to a city near you!

Coalition Efforts

By Monica Steinisch

Consumer Action and its allies recently called on policymakers and regulators about these important issues:

Transparency in remittance fees. Dozens of advocates signed on to a letter to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) asking the Bureau to amend the Remittance Rule, which governs fees, disclosures, and other practices related to international remittances, to ensure that the total cost of a remittance is transparent. Remittance costs have been rising, and these increases are contributing to the financial stresses of working-class consumers—frequently immigrants—who regularly send money to family members abroad. The letter urged the CFPB to require two key numbers to be prominently disclosed by remittance providers: 1) the total cost of the remittance in a single, upfront amount (the amount of money to be sent, plus all fees charged by all providers participating in the transaction, including fees charged by the recipient’s institution, all taxes charged on both ends for the transaction, any exchange rate margins, and any other hidden costs or fees; and 2) the total amount to be received by the recipient (the exact amount to be delivered to the recipient in the foreign currency after all fees and taxes have been deducted, as well as considering the actual exchange rate that the provider will use for the transaction). Further, the CFPB should eliminate the exception for non-covered third-party fees (the fees charged by the recipients’ providers) and reverse the expanded safe harbors that allow many financial institutions to avoid compliance. These changes would allow consumers to comparison shop more effectively, encourage a more competitive market among remittance providers, and lower costs across the market for low-income immigrants trying to help their families back home. Read the letter here.

Opposing damaging student loan legislation. Consumer Action joined more than a dozen allies in a legislative alert urging lawmakers to vote NO on the College Cost Reduction Act (CCRA) (HR 6951), should the bill move to a floor vote. In January 2024, the House Committee on Education & the Workforce passed the CCRA bill, sponsored by Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC), on a party-line vote. Despite its name, the College Cost Reduction Act could actually lead to higher debt burdens for students by replacing the existing income-driven repayment (IDR) plans with a single plan that would increase payments for most borrowers and remove safeguards that protect borrowers from carrying debt for more than 25 years. The legislation would also reverse bipartisan policy that stopped predatory recruiting of veterans by for-profit colleges to get at their GI Bill educational benefits, while providing low-quality credentials that do not lead to the promised career opportunities. And, it would gut critical safeguards currently in place to protect students against high-cost, low-quality programs, as well as rescind borrower defense to repayment, which provides the Education Department authority to discharge loan debt when student borrowers were subjected to unfair and deceptive practices, misrepresentations, or fraud. Read the letter here.

Needed protections from data brokers. In a letter to the CFPB, a coalition of consumer advocates, including Consumer Action, urged the agency to move ahead with its Consumer Reporting Rulemaking by releasing a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) as soon as possible. The advocates commended the CFPB for its recent steps to strengthen the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), including gathering information on how data brokers harm consumers, proposing potential rule updates that would better protect consumers from data brokers, releasing a proposed rule to remove medical debt from Americans’ credit reports, and promulgating guidance to highlight the ways that FCRA restricts worker surveillance. However, wide-ranging harms that data brokers cause and facilitate to consumers—particularly to vulnerable and marginalized populations—call for the prompt release of a proposed rule clarifying, among other things, that data brokers are consumer reporting agencies (CRAs) that must comply with FCRA. The groups also pressed for the CFPB’s proposed rule to prohibit consumer reporting agencies from selling “credit header” information without a permissible purpose as defined by FCRA, and to address the dysfunctions in the FCRA-mandated dispute systems at the nationwide CRAs and other CRAs. Prompt release of a proposed FCRA rule would more quickly protect consumers from the harms caused by data brokers, the unregulated sale of credit header data, and present-day FCRA dispute resolution shortcomings. (NOTE: On Dec. 3, the CFPB did, in fact, propose a rule to limit data brokers’ sale of sensitive personal information. See CFPB Watch, below.) Read the letter here.

CFPB Watch

By Ruth Susswein

As the active and effective era of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) oversight and consumer protection comes to a close for a while, Director Rohit Chopra has chosen to make the most of the time he has left leading this critical agency, before the incoming president replaces him with someone whose priorities will likely have little to do with protecting consumers.

Capping overdraft fees…for now

The CFPB’s new overdraft rule says that no longer shall big banks and credit unions rely on consumers’ use of overdraft as a profit center. Director Chopra has given the largest banks and credit unions three options. They can:

• Charge a flat $5 overdraft fee (down from $35); or
• Charge the actual cost incurred from providing overdraft services, if more than $5; or
• Provide an overdraft line of credit—a loan—and comply with the lending regulations applicable to products like credit cards (including disclosing the annual percentage rate [APR]).

While some banks are so concerned about losing billions of dollars in penalty fee income that they have sued to stop this new rule, others have already reduced or eliminated their overdraft fees (Capital One, Citibank). Nevertheless, under a new administration, the next CFPB director will likely not support a curb on excessive overdraft fees and will instead eliminate the fee cap. 

Separately, the consumer bureau also limited credit card late fees to $8, down from a high of $41, but a judgehas put that rule on hold.

Director Chopra’s next target: Data brokers

It’s probably fair to say that most people are fed up with their lack of control over the collection and sale of their personal data. Well, the CFPB is seeking to change that.

The consumer bureau has proposed a rule to reduce the sale of our sensitive personal information and require that our financial data be shared only with those who have a legitimate business need to see it. This would limit access to details about our income, debt payments, credit scores and credit reports.

The proposed rule would require that those who traffic in our personal information—data brokers—be considered a “consumer reporting agency,” and the personal data they sell would be defined as a “credit report.” That would mean that our data could only be shared with those who have a legally “permissible purpose” to access our name, Social Security number (SSN), individual taxpayer identification number (ITIN), date of birth, address and phone number. 

Data brokers would also be required to follow the consumer protection rules under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), which mandates that our data be accurate, accessible to us, and corrected when we dispute inaccurate information. 

Clean energy loan protections

Homeowners lured into a loan for solar panels or some other energy-efficient home improvement will now receive key information before committing. These Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) loans are paid back through homeowners’ property taxes.

“Today’s rule stops unscrupulous companies and salespeople from luring homeowners into unaffordable loans based on false promises of energy savings,” said Director Chopra. 

Borrowers are often shocked to learn that PACE loans have hiked their property taxes by about $2,700 a year (an 88% increase), according to the CFPB. What’s more, when consumers fall behind on payments, PACE lenders are first in line to collect—even before mortgage lenders—which puts homeowners at risk of foreclosure. 

The Bureau’s final PACE rule will require lenders to evaluate the homeowner’s ability to repay the loan, rather than rely on their equity in the home. The rule is expected to especially help low-income borrowers and communities of color avoid unaffordable, predatory loans marketed as a clean energy home improvement solution.

Class Action Database: Color Factory settles over opaque ticket fees

By Monica Steinisch

Among recent settlements added to the Consumer Action Class Action Database is the $5.5 million Quick Box agreed to pay to resolve allegations that the company used a fake “free trial” scheme in marketing La Pura cosmetics. Quick Box allegedly offered a free trial of the cosmetic products, requiring only that customers pay for shipping and handling, but later used customers’ credit card or bank account information to charge them for subscriptions they hadn’t signed up for. If you were billed for La Pura products between June 20, 2016, and Sept. 9, 2024, you may be eligible for payment. The deadline for claims is Feb. 5, 2025.

Of note is the nearly $715,000 Color Factor agreed to pay to settle allegations that the company failed to properly disclose a fee for electronic tickets to its Color Factory NYC prior to those tickets being selected for purchase—a violation of New York Arts and Cultural Affairs Law. Customers who purchased electronic tickets to Color Factory NYC between Aug. 29, 2022, and Jan. 23, 2024, and paid a fee in connection with the purchase, and who submitted a valid claim form by the Dec. 23, 2024, deadline, are eligible for payment. 

Just last month, on Dec. 17, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced a final Junk Fees Rule, which will prohibit bait-and-switch pricing and other tactics used to hide total prices of live-event tickets and hotel and vacation rentals. These industries have a record of burying fees until checkout, surprising consumers with “resort,” “convenience,” “service” and similar fees that inflate the advertised price. The practice not only harms consumers, it undercuts honest businesses by making their prices look higher in comparison.

The Junk Fees Rule requires that businesses clearly and conspicuously disclose the true total price, including all mandatory fees, wherever the price of live-event tickets or short-term lodging is mentioned—a requirement that will level the playing field for businesses and make it possible for consumers to compare prices up front. Read the FTC’s press release here.

The final rule should become effective around April.

About Consumer Action

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Consumer Action is a nonprofit organization that has championed the rights of underrepresented consumers nationwide since 1971. Throughout its history, the organization has dedicated its resources to promoting financial and consumer literacy and advocating for consumer rights both in the media and before lawmakers to promote economic justice for all. With the resources and infrastructure to reach millions of consumers, Consumer Action is one of the most recognized, effective and trusted consumer organizations in the nation.

Consumer education. To empower consumers to assert their rights in the marketplace, Consumer Action provides a range of educational resources. The organization’s extensive library of free publications offers in-depth information on many topics related to personal money management, housing, insurance and privacy. At Consumer-Action.org, visitors have instant access to important consumer news, downloadable materials, an online “help desk,” the Take Action advocacy database, and more. Our in-language media outreach allows us to share scam alerts and other timely consumer news with a wide non-English-speaking audience.

Community outreach. With a special focus on serving low- and moderate-income and limited-English-speaking consumers, Consumer Action maintains strong ties to a national network of more than 6,500 community-based organizations. Outreach services include in-person and web-based training and dissemination of financial and consumer education materials in many languages, including English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese. Consumer Action’s network is the largest and most diverse of its kind.

Advocacy. Consumer Action is deeply committed to ensuring that underrepresented consumers are represented in the national media and in front of lawmakers. The organization promotes pro-consumer policy, regulation and legislation by taking positions on dozens of bills at the state and national levels and submitting comments and testimony on a host of consumer protection issues. Additionally, its diverse staff provides the media with expert commentary on key consumer issues supported by solid data and victim testimony.