Consumers Union Recommends Increased Oversight of the Service of Process

• February 02, 2011
• by Jeff Karotkin

Consumers Union Report was issued last month (January 2011) that deals with alleged debt collection abuses. Process Servers and the service of process are mentioned in the report.

The report addresses many alleged abuses committed by the collection industry. Admittedly Process Servers are not the primary focus of the report, but once again the New York sewer service incidents are being called out as the reason for increased oversight of the process serving profession. However, one of the key recommendations by Consumers Union is to “increase oversight of the service of process” at a state and federal level.

I believe that even though it may feel like the right thing to do for those in power, more laws and regulations like those currently being imposed in NY are not necessary or useful. These new laws will only serve to drive many small and solo process servers out of business or force them to become part of larger companies in order to survive.

If the profession has any hope of stopping the kind of knee-jerk reaction like we are seeing NY, the profession should continue to watch the Federal Trade Commission’s activities and recommendations and the activities of the newly formed agency Consumer Financial Protection Bureau who may have the authority to write new laws under the FDCPA to rein in alleged abuses.

Service of Process Looking Forward is the personal blog of Jeff Karotkin and is part of the ServeNow Community Blog. Jeff has 25 years of experience in the process serving industry and is passionate about confronting the challenges that face process servers.

Jeff's posts reflect his own views and may not reflect the views of ServeNow and its members. Please contact us if you are interested in joining the ServeNow Community Blog.