Tempoe, LLC
On September 11, 2023, the Bureau issued an order against Tempoe, LLC, a nonbank consumer finance company, with offices in Cincinnati, Ohio and Manchester, New Hampshire. Tempoe purchased personal property and services from retailers and then leased them to consumers. Typically, consumers were offered Tempoe’s product after applying and being rejected for conventional financing through the retailer. Under the terms of Tempoe’s agreements, consumers made periodic payments for an initial term of five months. Then, unless the consumer made an active selection to purchase or return the property, Tempoe continued auto-debiting the consumers for the full month-to-month term of the contract, typically 18 to 36 months. Some consumers discovered only at the conclusion of their initial term that they did not own their items and were required to pay more. The Bureau found that Tempoe engaged in unfair acts and practices in violation of the Consumer Financial Protection Act of 2010 by (1) failing to ensure that consumers had access to the terms of the transaction, and (2) prohibiting the return of some goods and services. The Bureau also found that Tempoe violated Regulation M, which implements the Consumer Leasing Act, by failing to provide consumers with required disclosures for leases that extended beyond the initial term by six months or more. The order permanently bans Tempoe from offering or providing consumer leases and requires Tempoe to release all consumers with existing lease agreements from their leases and to allow them to maintain the leased products with no further financial obligation; this includes approximately 19,300 leases with an aggregate value of approximately $33 million. The order also requires Tempoe to pay a $2 million civil money penalty, of which $1 million will be remitted upon Tempoe’s payment of that amount to the states that filed a parallel multi-state settlement addressing the same conduct.