Panel advances Peggy Gossett-Seidman bill to block after-hours debt collection texts

Image via Peggy Gossett-Seidman.

Debt collectors will have to stop sending midnight “you up?” texts in Florida under legislation advancing in the House.

Members of the Insurance and Banking Subcommittee amended and OK’d a bill (HB 147) that would extend to text messages an existing Sunshine State ban on debt collection calls between 9 p.m. and 8 a.m.

This restriction would not extend to emails.

The legislation would update a 30-year-old state law. And it’s needed, according to Highland Beach Republican Rep. Peggy Gossett-Seidman, who said she decided to sponsor the bill after hearing about how a business owner in her district had been targeted with “aggressive debt collection lawsuits.”

“I quickly realized this was not an isolated issue, but a statewide problem,” she said in a statement.

“Debt collection should be fair, not abusive. Too many Floridians are being harassed by collectors using intimidation tactics and relentless communication at all hours. House-Bill 147 will stop these practices and bring long-overdue reforms.”

Thirteen percent of Floridians have debt in collections, exceeding the national average of 11%, according to information Gossett-Seidman’s Office collected and shared. Last year alone, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau received 148,862 debt collection complaints from Florida. The year before, the Federal Trade Commission recorded more than 81,000 complaints about debt collection misconduct in Florida, the second-most nationally.

Gossett-Seidman’s bill underwent a significant change last week in committee. As originally filed, the bill would have changed existing state statutes to explicitly prohibit debt collectors from after-hours phone calls.

The updated version clarifies that the prohibition extends to all forms of modern communication.

HB 147, now in its new committee substitute form, awaits new committee references.

Republican Sen. Ana Maria Rodriguez of Doral is carrying the bill’s upper-chamber counterpart (SB 232), which in its current form would only clarify that email communications are exempt from the state’s existing ban on 9 p.m.-to-8 a.m. debt collection contact.