SSA Blog

Lawsuits are being filed against self storage operators and other businesses for violating state Fair Debt Collection Practices Acts’ restriction on collecting consumer debt. Suits have been filed in Florida and California, where debt collection laws apply not just to debt collectors but also to creditors collecting their own debts. One common restriction is communicating with consumers at inconvenient times. Allowing collection calls only between 8:00 AM and 9:00 PM is a common restriction. What is novel about some of these lawsuits is that they allege that sending an email that hits the consumer’s email box outside the permissible time constitutes a violation of the law.

For example, we have seen complaints alleging that the email was delivered at 2:00 AM. While a phone call at this hour would seem to be a violation of the law, is an email analogous to a telephone call, or is it more like a letter delivered to the consumer’s mailbox? This question is important because USPS communications are not subject to the time restrictions that apply to phone calls. Since these lawsuits are so novel, no court has ever ruled on the question: Is an email a covered communication? Consumer statutes often use broad language when defining terms, and communication is defined as “communication,” which means “the conveying of information regarding a debt directly or indirectly to any person through any medium.” The breadth of this definition essentially covers every means of communication, but is a debt collector communicating when an email is received and sits in the inbox or when it is opened? It is a communication that does not have the same potential to demand the recipient’s attention as a phone call, covered by the law’s time restrictions. The courts will decide this issue, but storage operators and other businesses are being sued today.

Plaintiffs Seek Quick Settlement

The lawyers who bring these lawsuits are not looking for a fight; rather, they hope for a quick settlement. The self storage operator is faced with a difficult decision: Does he feed the beast and settle, or does he fight and potentially incur legal fees far in excess of the cost of settlement?

Until there is legal clarity on the applicability of the state consumer debt collection laws, the best course of action is to ensure that email and text communications only arrive at the delinquent tenant’s email box or phone from 8:00 AM to 9:00 PM and not in the middle of the night.

The SSA and FSSA hope to introduce legislation to resolve this issue in Florida during the 2025 legislative session that commences in March.