Attorney Margaret Reiter was a consumer investigator with the Los Angeles County Consumer Affairs Department for four years and worked for 20 years as a consumer prosecutor with the California Attorney General's Consumer Law Section. She has investigated or prosecuted businesses engaged in consumer fraud including foreclosure "consultants," mortgage lenders, debt settlement companies, vocational schools, living trust mill/annuity sellers, prepaid phone card companies, and tax refund anticipation loan providers. She has drafted consumer protection legislation, advocated for stronger consumer protection before regulatory agencies, trained other prosecutors and investigators, and prepared consumer alerts and spoken to the public on Truth-in-Lending, telephone slamming and cramming, truth in phone billing, bankruptcy, and vocational schools, among other consumer topics.
Articles By Margaret Reiter
Because pawn shops charge high rates and fees, they're not a good way to get money.
If a creditor has obtained a judgment against you and seeks to enforce it by taking your cash, or by seizing and selling other property, you most likely can keep at least some of that property by
If you dispute an item in your credit report, but the credit reporting agency refuses to correct it, you can take additional steps to remedy the problem.
Learn about Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion—the three nationwide credit bureaus.
If a creditor sues you and gets a judgment, it has a whole host of collection methods available to get its money from you, including wage attachments, property levies, assignment orders, and more
Learn about requesting a "claims and defenses" chargeback.
In addition to disputing incorrect or incomplete information and adding explanations for negative information the credit reporting agency will not remove, you may want to ask the credit reportin
If you've already obtained all of your free yearly credit reports, you can buy another.
At least once per year, you should get your credit report from each of the three nationwide credit reporting agencies and check each report for errors or for outdated or incomplete information.
If a creditor wants to seize your property in order to enforce a judgment (a court order allowing it to seize your property to satisfy the debt), there are a number of categories of property it
