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By Danielle Furfaro and Rich CalderMayor Bill de Blasio said Friday he is once again willing to consider a cap on for-hire vehicles such as Uber — three years after wimping out on the move.

Hizzoner made the comments on WNYC radio Friday morning in response to a question from a caller who asked him what he plans to do to end the recent spate of cabbie suicides, which taxi advocates say were fueled by financial woes caused by the car-app services.

“I think the caps are the kind of thing we need to talk about again because this situation has gotten worse since then, both in terms of the pressure that has been put on the [cab-]medallion owners and everyday taxi drivers,” de Blasio told host Brian Lehrer.

When de Blasio first tried to go toe to toe with Uber, there were about 47,000 black cars on the road.

Now there are more than 100,000. The nasty battle over the issue in the summer of 2015 sputtered when de Blasio couldn’t get the City Council votes needed to push the cap through. Councilman Steve Levin, who was the one who first sponsored the bill back then, reintroduced it to the council earlier this year and is trying to garner votes.

There also should be more regulation on the for-hire vehicles to get them more in line with the safety and other rigmarole that cabbies have to go through, de Blasio said.

“We are trying to create parity across all of this industry,” he said. “Everything that yellow cabs do, the other should have to do too. So we applied disability-access rules to the for-hire vehicles. I want to see stronger safety and labor rules for them as well.”

Taxi advocates say getting raises for all drivers has to be a part of the package, too.

“There needs to be an immediate raise for the drives and regulations on labor standards to protect their income,” said New York Taxi Workers Alliance executive director Bhairavi Desai.

De Blasio also said that since the city can no longer sell medallions because of the lack of demand, it needs to take steps to protect the value of the more than 13,000 that are already out there.

Desai said the only way to do that is to cap Uber vehicles.

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“The thing that has reduced the value is the driver’s ability to earn a living,” she said.

Uber officials argued that there are still enough riders to go around.

“Each week, 30,000 new New Yorkers sign up to use Uber for the first time,” said Uber spokeswoman Alix Anfang. “Uber’s riders take the majority of their trips outside the congested streets of Manhattan, and in the communities that have long been ignored by yellow taxis and are underserved by public transit.”
 

There are many reasons why people file for bankruptcy and below are the common mistakes to avoid when filing for Bankruptcy in Washington. From credit card debt, to loss of income, to a divorce—bankruptcy is an effective, legal way to help you get back on your feet financially. When it comes time to file for bankruptcy in Washington State, there are a few things you need to keep in mind to prevent unnecessary complications.
 
When it comes to Chapter 7, Chapter 13 or Chapter 11, keep in mind that you’re not going to be able to fool the court or cleverly hide your assets. Millions of people have filed bankruptcy and the legal system has seen and heard it all. There is a 100% chance you will cause more harm than good if you attempt to pull a fast one over the court.
 
Disclose Everything to Your Tacoma Attorney
Without a doubt, this is one of the most important aspects that many people tend to overlook. The reason you hired a bankruptcy attorney is to help guide you through the Washington bankruptcy process. As such, you need to disclose everything regarding your income, assets and financial status.
 
The advice you receive from experienced and trusted attorney is based upon the particulars of your unique financial situation. If you’re withholding information, it could come back to bite you at a later point in time. You should also be aware that the bankruptcy process requires you to disclose everything to the court – your assets, debts, income, creditors and even multiple prior years of financial history prior to the bankruptcy filing.
 
Do Not Repay Relatives or Insiders
In the eyes of the court, your relatives do not have any special legal status that puts them in a protected class above your other creditors. Prior to filing Washington bankruptcy, do not repay any loans your relatives may have given you. Otherwise, the bankruptcy trustee can come after your relative in pursuit of the money you paid them. They will then redistribute those monies to the same-class creditors.
 
An “insider” is considered to be a friend, business associate or a creditor whom you might have a favorable relationship with. You can’t pick and choose who gets paid off first. That is up to the trustee to manage the disbursements.
 
Do Not Incur Any Additional Debt
Once you have made up your mind to file for bankruptcy, do not incur any additional debt that you don’t intend to repay in full. This includes using your credit card to buy a $5 latte at the local coffee shop. The court may deny your right to cancel the debt in bankruptcy, or they could view it as a criminal matter.
 
Don’t Pull Money from Retirement Accounts
Retirement funds are usually protected in bankruptcy procedures. The court may allow you to discharge your debt without coming after your retirement fund. Avoid touching those monies unless it’s absolutely necessary. The court recognizes that a retirement fund is there to help you live once you retire.
 
Don’t Transfer Property
Transferring property out of your name will not prevent the trustee from taking it from you. If you transferred property to a relative, the trustee will come after the relative in order to gain possession of the property. It’s best to not transfer anything out of your name, prior to getting legal advice.
 
Schedule a Free Consultation with Your Tacoma Bankruptcy Attorney
When it comes time to file for bankruptcy, you need a compassionate and skilled attorney who will be able to guide you through the process as cleanly as possible. Northwest Debt Relief Law Firm, we can help you with filing for Chapter 7, Chapter 11, and Chapter 13 bankruptcy in Washington State.  We will be there every step of the way to help navigate you through the often-complex and difficult bankruptcy process.
 
Give us a call at (253) 780-8008 to schedule a free consultation with one of our bankruptcy attorneys. If you have any other questions about bankruptcy, one of our attorneys will be more than happy to offer advice on your particular situation.
The post COMMON MISTAKES TO AVOID WHEN FILING FOR BANKRUPTCY IN WASHINGTON appeared first on Portland Bankruptcy Attorney | Northwest Debt Relief.

Below are ways that your credit card balance can impact your future. Attorney Tom McAvity can answer any other questions you might have by giving him a call under the “contact us” section below.
How Credit Card Balance Can Impact Your Future
Credit card companies are great at sending you promotions where low interest rates are offered for cash funds or for offering low interest rates to transfer a credit card balance. The low interest rates can sometimes be as low as 0%. It may seem like you aren’t paying for your purchases for a while by using these amazing offers, but the promotional offers are known to be credit traps.
 
How Does the Trap Work?
In a prospering economy where most of their customers are gainfully employed, the main goal of a creditor is to make it as easy as possible for their customers to rack up as much debt as they can. A low minimum payment is a good way for someone to feel secure enough to spend a large balance on a credit card without feeling the immediate impact of a big ticket purchase. When consumer confidence is high, credit card companies benefit by gaining life long customers who may have a big credit card balance with them for many years to come.
 
The credit card companies will make their money from interest payments in the long run. Using a credit card that has a compound interest rate with a very small minimum payment allows your balance to grow even though you are paying the minimum payment amount required on a monthly basis. On a monthly basis, the amount that the interest is calculated from continues to grow. For example, if your interest on your balance is $125 and you are only paying a minimum amount of $70, an extra $55 will be added to the next month as the basis for calculating interest for the next period. In short, as the balance goes up, so do the interest payments.
 
But Wait… There Is Another Way That Credit Cards Are Hoping To Make Money
It’s not just from interest that credit card companies are hoping to earn your hard earned money. They also want to sprinkle in some late payment fees. The more balances you have on credit cards, the more likely it is that you may just miss a payment one month and forget to pay it. They are hoping that your email inbox is swamped with a ton of junk email and the late payment warning goes unnoticed, if they even send an email for that. Once you miss a payment, a fee can be attached to your next credit card balance and if you miss another one, fees can add up. There are several imaginable scenarios that could cause you to miss a payment even though you are normally a responsible person.
 
In Tough Times, Your Credit Cards Will Be There
The previous strategies can work when customers are employed and making payments, but when times go bad, that is when credit card companies can really strike! The promotional offers get even more enticing when funds are short. They can help you postpone payments from other cards at a rate of 0%. Well why not? You might ask. You can postpone payments until times get better and you get that better paying job. What if that better paying job doesn’t come around for longer than the promotional 0% APR expires. Now you are left with late payments which cause additional fees to be added to your credit card balance and interest compounding on those higher balances. Just when you think it can’t get any worse, credit card companies will increase your interest rate and cut down your balance limit on your card. So now you can’t spend anymore money on the card, but the actual balance has grown significantly and continues to add up more and more every month just from high interest rates.
 
This is the ideal scenario for credit card companies. At this point, your balance is growing and your minimum payment has come to a point where you cannot afford to pay them because you are unemployed. Unemployment rates are currently 4.1% in Salem, Oregon according to The Bureau of Labor Statistics. This looks like the end for the credit card company getting any more of your money. Now you are so angry that they have increased the interest and added fees that you refuse to pay them anything at all. You will live with the late payments because what they are doing to you does not deserve any more payment for their unethical business practices. The only problem is that this is again another favorable situation for a credit card company.
 
Now they can take you to court and sue you for the balance. After they get a judgment, they can intercept your paycheck in a wage garnishment or they can add a lien to your home. It still does not end there. Even after a judgment in court, a creditor can still continue to charge you interest and fees.
 
This credit card trap is a trap that has worked on people year after year. Some people even fall into the trap multiple times. It is in these situations that you need to take a step back and find information you need to eliminate the debt as soon as you can.
Contact Us Today
While dealing with financial complications can be overwhelming, Tom McAvity can help you manage your unique circumstances and help you break this pattern of debt. You can eliminate credit card debt in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing and we can help! Please contact Northwest Debt Relief Law Firm by calling (971) 600-2828 to schedule your personal consultation.
 
The post How Credit Card Balance Can Impact Your Future appeared first on Portland Bankruptcy Attorney | Northwest Debt Relief.

To many people, falling behind on credit card payments means a ruined credit score and an endless string of calls and letters from collectors. If you let those calls and letters go unanswered for long enough, however, the credit card company may decide to file a lawsuit.
These lawsuits, usually filed in state and local courts, are increasingly common and can have devastating financial implications. Wages and bank accounts can be seized to collect on the resulting judgments, which continue to accrue interest for years to come. Four million Americans had their wages garnished over consumer debts in 2013, and reports indicate that Black communities are hit much harder by debt collection lawsuits than others.

Once you understand how credit card lawsuits work, you can prevent the financial devastation that comes with a judgment against you.Click To Tweet
Buying Credit Card Debt Is Big BusinessPast due credit card accounts are sold along with thousands of others to a debt buyer such as Midland Funding or Portfolio Recovery Associates. These companies buy credit card and other consumer debt accounts at steep discounts with the expectation that they will collect enough to make a profit overall.
The business model works. PRA Group, the publicly traded corporate parent of Portfolio Recovery Associates, reported net income of $86.9 million in the fourth quarter of 2017. Encore Capital Group, Inc., the largest publicly traded United States debt buyer by revenue and parent company of Midland Funding, reported revenue of $1.19 billion in 2017. These numbers have caused thousands of smaller players to enter the market, each one buying thousands of credit card accounts and employing people all over the world in a determined effort to squeeze the last dollar out of your wallet.
How Do Debt Buyers Make Money?When a debt buyer purchases your credit card account, the first thing they do is send a letter or make a phone call asking you to make a payment. By the time that happens, you have been getting the regular statements for a few months.
The collectors know the psychological effects of past due debt, and use it to their advantage as a way of getting you to pay the credit card balance.
That initial contact is terrifying. You are distressed about not being able to pay, and admitting it to a faceless collector on the phone heightens the negative feelings. As a result, you’re likely to begin screening your calls and letting the mail pile up unopened.
The calls and letters increase in frequency and intensity, and the account will get transferred from one collection agency to another. Each subsequent debt collector will be more aggressive than the last, knowing full well that they are unlikely to get you to pay the credit card debt just because you’ve been asked to do so.
As the psychological pressure increases, it becomes clear that the goal is to scare you rather than extract a voluntary payment.
Collectors Use the Court System to Maximize ProfitsMany people think debt buyers prefer to avoid lawsuits to collect old credit card debts because it requires them to pay lawyers and incur costs of litigation. If this were true, however, credit card lawsuits would be far less common than is the case. In fact, there were nearly 200,000 credit card collection lawsuits filed in New York in 2011 alone. Moreover, a report by ProPublica found that these lawsuits accounted for 48% of the court judgments filed in New Jersey in 2011.
Credit card lawsuits are common because they are profitable. Over 95% of consumers do nothing when they receive court papers because they have become convinced that there’s no way to prevent a judgment from being filed against them. Some end up filing for bankruptcy, but most people accept the consequences of a court judgment.
Those consequences can include wage garnishment, funds seized from bank accounts, liens on property, and even the forced sale of automobiles and other assets to pay the debt. What’s worse is that the judgment continues to accrue interest, rising steadily over the years as the balance remains unpaid.
How Collectors Train You to Ignore The LawsuitWhen you get court papers about a credit card lawsuit, you have a choice: take no action, or use the laws to level the playing field.
The debt collectors have done everything possible to convince you they have all the power, but that’s not true. Being sued for a credit card debt merely means that someone is claiming you borrowed money, that you failed to pay, that the balance is what they claim it to be, and that you are legally obligated to pay this company.
Do nothing, and the court will assume the debt buyer is telling the truth. If you defend the case, however, you can force the credit card company’s lawyers to prove every claim they have made against you.
Defending the case forces the collection attorney into a defensive posture because their entire business model depends on you taking no action. Not only do the statistics bear this out, so do your actions up to the point when you got sued – you didn’t make payments, you didn’t answer the phone calls, and you didn’t respond to the letters.
In other words, the entire collection process is designed to condition you to do nothing. Like a sick psychological experiment, you’ve been unwittingly trained to be passive in the face of the credit card collector.

Debt collection calls and letters are stressful, so people avoid them. By the time the collector sues, avoidance has become psychologically engrained. Collectors get judgments because people ignore court papers.Click To Tweet
Take These Steps Instead of Accepting a Judgment Against YouHere’s what you’re going to do.

1. Don’t panic. Nothing terrible is going to happen to you so long as you keep on top of the situation.
2. Identify who’s suing you. This is the name you’ll see before the word, “Plaintiff.”
3. Identify who’s being sued. This should be your name. If your name doesn’t appear here then you’re not being sued. If someone else’s name appears with yours, that person is also being sued – you should have a talk with them about what’s going on.
4. Note the name of the law firm representing the Plaintiff. These are the people you need to communicate with from now on. The creditor won’t communicate with you directly anymore (that’s why they hired the lawyers).
5. Write down the date, time, and how you got the papers. Remember, you’ve got a limited amount of time to do anything about the lawsuit before the court enters a judgment against you. Better to know when the clock starts running than to guess about it later on.
6. Review the claims. You’ll want to read the Complaint carefully because it will give you valuable information about the name of the original creditor (the debt may have been sold or transferred, so the Plaintiff may not be the same as the original company) as well as the amount of money they claim you owe.
7. Organize any documents you have. Go through your files, bank account records, and old mail to get any information you may have about the credit card debt. Even if you don’t think a document is important, it may contain helpful clues.
8. Get your most recent paystub and tax return. These financial documents will help analyze your ability to pay a settlement or judgment, as well as to understand what you may have at risk in the event of a wage garnishment or bank account freeze.
9. Talk with a collection lawsuit defense lawyer. You aren’t legally required to have a lawyer represent you in court, but you should make sure to talk with an attorney who practices in the field of collection lawsuit defense. Even if you don’t hire that attorney or decide to go it alone, it’s important that you have all the information you need to figure out if you’ve got any valid defenses or should use the magic words. An attorney will also tell you how long you have to file papers with the court to protect yourself – and what the impact of a judgment will be on you.
10. Show up. You have to either hire a lawyer or go to court to file papers within the period of time provided for under the law (a phone call to the credit card company’s lawyers won’t protect you). If the court schedules a hearing, you or your lawyer have to appear in the right place and at the right time. When a trial is scheduled, you need to be there as well. If you don’t do what you’re required to do, the creditor wins a judgment against you. That’s why it’s important to always show up – there’s no legal excuse for forgetting to file papers with the court or for failing to hire a debt collection lawsuit defense lawyer on time.

Over Your Head? Here’s Where to Get Help.The mechanics involved in defending a credit card lawsuit can be confusing. Pleadings need to conform to certain standards, and making a mistake could mean the difference between success and failure. That’s why it’s a good idea to get some help before venturing into the courtroom on your own.
I’m available to speak with you if you’re being sued in either New York or California, but I may not be the right lawyer for one reason or another. If you’re looking to go it alone, many courts have weekly or monthly events when you can speak with a volunteer lawyer to get tips on defending yourself. Go to the courthouse and speak with the clerk to learn about the resources available in your area.
Free and low-cost legal services are also available for people who have incomes below certain thresholds. Get in touch with the bar association (a good starting point is to search online for “bar association near me”) and ask about pro se (that’s the legal term for someone who handles their own case without a lawyer) resources.
No matter what you do, one thing is for certain: when facing a credit card lawsuit, don’t ignore it. Your financial future is at stake.

The post 10 Steps To Take If You’re Sued For A Credit Card Debt appeared first on Shaev & Fleischman P.C..