CFPB Denies UniRush Petition for More Time to Produce Documents (Dec. 7, 2015)
The CFPB has denied UniRush’s petition to narrow the scope and extend the time the company has to produce documents for a bureau investigation following an October system outage that left some RushCard cardholders without access to their account information and, in some cases, their funds. On Oct. 27, the CFPB sent a Civil Investigative Demand (CID) to UniRush, requesting information dating back to Jan. 1, 2015, including reports and documents related to a planned system conversion, which UniRush cited as the culprit for the mid-October service disruption. The CID gave the company until Nov. 10 to product the requested information. On Nov. 9, UniRush filed a petition calling the CID “overly broad and unduly burdensome” and requesting until Jan. 15, 2016, to produce the documents. Failing an extension, the company asked for the CID to be set aside.
The CFPB last week denied UniRush’s request, claiming the bureau was amenable to providing extensions for specific information requests, but that it never received any specific proposals from UniRush in response to the offer. The CFPB also alleges that UniRush failed to substantiate its claim the CID was overly broad or burdensome. In its petition to modify or set aside the CID, UniRush argued that it shouldn’t be required to produce data for the entire year because of the system upgrade error, which only affected customers for a short period of time in October. However, the CFPB said the CID “is not limited to the October 2015 timeframe.”
With UniRush’s petition denied, the company has until the end of this week to meet and confer with the CFPB to provide a specific time table for responding to each request in the CID. In cases where an extension is needed, the company will have to explain why, according to the CFPB.
“We are committed to working cooperatively with the CFPB and have already begun to produce the documents they’ve requested,” a RushCard spokesperson tells Paybefore. The company produced its first batch of documents for the CFPB on Nov. 19. UniRush also has taken strides to compensate customers affected by the service disruption, announcing a four-month holiday from card fees that will run Nov. 1, 2015, through Feb. 29, 2016, and promising a $2 million to $3 million fund to reimburse affected customers for any late fees or costs stemming from the interruption.
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