Which place’s debt rules apply—and who can help?

S_OR PASS-02 — bounded correction to PASS-01

Fresh research access: October 25, 2026, Pacific time. Mode/model: Regular Chat, GPT-5.6 Sol Pro, the highest verified available fallback in this session. Review character: Focused researcher correction only. This is not an independent review of PASS-01 or of the coordinator’s saved eight tables, eleven examples, or 27 scalar checks.

PASS-01 remains immutable except for the exact replacements below. All other evidence-backed findings and all unresolved state, provider, contract, currentness, federal-applicability, local, and tribal holds remain unchanged.

1. Replacement for Example 8

Example 8 — Later custodial cancellation

Legal assumptions

• Assume the consumer has validly invoked the later-term cancellation branch.
• That branch separately requires ten calendar days’ written notice.
• The enacted 2009 text and the current DFR instructions separately state that cancellation is effective on mailing, or immediately when sent electronically or by fax. This example does not invent a ten-day delayed-effective-date calculation or otherwise reconcile those clauses.
• Under the later branch, the relevant return base is the consumer’s money that the provider currently holds and has not expended to creditors. It is not a blanket refund of every provider fee. The distinct early-cancellation branch is the one that requires refund of all fees paid before cancellation. Oregon Legislative Information System+1

Scenario A — $1,000 represents starting receipts

Inputs

• Starting consumer receipts placed in provider custody for creditor payment: $1,000.00
• Creditor disbursement already made from those receipts: $400.00
• Current unexpended consumer balance held by provider: $600.00

Reconciliation

• Starting receipts: $1,000.00
• Less creditor disbursement: $400.00
• Current unexpended held balance: $1,000.00 − $400.00 = $600.00

Result

• Amount returned under the assumed later-cancellation branch: $600.00

The $400 creditor disbursement is used once to reconcile starting receipts to the current balance. No fee deduction is introduced.

Scenario B — $1,000 represents the current amount held

Assume instead that the provider currently holds $1,000.00, and a separate $400.00 creditor disbursement occurred previously.

• Current held and unexpended balance: $1,000.00
• Prior creditor disbursement: historical; already outside the current balance
• Amount returned under the assumed later-cancellation branch: $1,000.00

The prior $400.00 must not be subtracted a second time. Doing so would incorrectly reduce the present balance to $600.00.

Currentness qualification

The precise cancellation branches were freshly confirmed in the enacted 2009 HB 2191 §5 text and corroborated by the current DFR operational page. The official current Chapter 697 URL returned HTTP 403 and was not recovered, so this correction does not claim a freshly completed official current-codification or amendment-chain check. Oregon Legislative Information System+1

2. Replacement for PASS-01 §4.5 — federal credit-repair overlap

Where a seller or telemarketer represents that goods or services will remove derogatory credit information or improve a person’s credit history, record, or rating, 16 C.F.R. §310.4(a)(2) conditionally prohibits requesting or receiving a fee until both of these conditions are satisfied:

1. The time frame in which the seller represented that all of the goods or services would be provided has expired; and
2. The seller has provided the person with a consumer report from a consumer reporting agency demonstrating that the promised results were achieved, and that report was issued more than six months after the results were achieved.

The rule expressly preserves the Fair Credit Reporting Act requirement that a consumer report may be obtained only for a specified permissible purpose. This is the credit-improvement rule in §310.4(a)(2), not a substitution of the separate debt-relief fee provision in §310.4(a)(5). eCFR

CROA may separately apply when the statutory definition is met, including use of interstate commerce or the mails to sell, provide, perform, or represent paid services for the express or implied purpose of improving a consumer’s credit record, history, or rating, or providing related advice. The definition excludes qualifying §501(c)(3) nonprofits, a creditor assisting a consumer to restructure debt owed to that creditor, and specified depository institutions, credit unions, affiliates, and subsidiaries. U.S. Code

When CROA applies:

• 15 U.S.C. §1679b(b): the credit-repair organization may not charge or receive money or other valuable consideration for an agreed service before that service is fully performed. U.S. Code
• 15 U.S.C. §1679d(a)(1): services require a compliant written and dated contract signed by the consumer.
• 15 U.S.C. §1679d(a)(2): no services may be provided before the end of the three-business-day period beginning on the date the contract is signed.
• 15 U.S.C. §1679d(b)(4): the contract must contain the prescribed cancellation statement using the separate wording that cancellation is available before midnight of the third business day after the date on which the consumer signed. No calendar calculation or reconciliation of those two statutory formulations is made in this pass. U.S. Code

These TSR and CROA conclusions remain conditional. PASS-02 does not establish that any particular Oregon debt-settlement program, advertisement, call flow, entity, service representation, debt, or consumer transaction falls within either federal regime.

3. Replacement savings-fee timing qualification

The 2017 enacted text of ORS 697.692(1)(e) establishes a fee equal to 7.5% of the difference between enrolled principal and the amount paid to the creditor to settle the debt, and permits that fee only if the provider obtains a reduction in principal. Oregon Legislative Information System

A separate timing issue must remain visible:

• Current OAR 441-910-0099 continues to incorporate Appendix A for the purpose of illustrating the ORS 697.692 fee structure. Oregon Secretary of State+1
• Appendix A item 4 says the 7.5% fee may be charged only when the creditor has discharged the debt. Oregon Secretary of State+1
• Appendix A is a 2015 illustration. Its generic paragraph 3 treatment of custodial and consumer-account monthly fees does not accurately reproduce the later 2017 distinction between ORS 697.692(1)(c) and (d).
• That dated generic illustration is not a sufficient reason to silently discard item 4’s creditor-discharge timing language, because the current rule display still incorporates the Appendix.
• Conversely, this pass does not resolve whether the item 4 discharge language retains binding timing effect after the 2017 statutory amendment, or merely remains an incorporated illustration subject to the later statute.
• No first-creditor-payment earning rule, partial-payment trigger, or controlling judicial resolution is inferred.

Accordingly, the state savings-fee timing remains partially unresolved: principal reduction is a verified statutory condition, and creditor discharge is an expressly incorporated Appendix condition whose continued post-2017 legal effect requires additional authoritative reconciliation.

4. Stable PASS-01 claim-cell replacements

5. New corrective claims

6. Minimal document and version-usage corrections

These are aliases or usage qualifications, not inflated counts of new substantive authorities.

7. Affected coverage patch

8. Researcher self-check

Freshly opened and read for this correction

• Complete current displayed OAR Division 910, including OAR 441-910-0099’s incorporation of Appendix A.
• The complete one-page Appendix A; item 4’s discharge language was inspected in parsed text and PDF screenshot.
• Current DFR debt-management page sections addressing nominal fees, written agreements, early cancellation, later notice/effectiveness wording, and return of unexpended creditor funds.
• Selected HB 2191 §5 material on enrolled pages 6–7; parsed text and page images were inspected. The other portions of the 28-page bill were not reread.
• SB 722 §1 and §§2–4 on enrolled pages 1–2; parsed text and page images were inspected.
• Current eCFR §310.4(a)(2), including both payment conditions and the FCRA permissible-purpose proviso.
• Current OLRC displays for 15 U.S.C. §§1679a, 1679b, and 1679d, each stating currency through Public Law 119-120, October 7, 2026.
• Both separate one-page 2009 staff measure summaries, including their nonendorsement notices.
• Official OLIS overviews for HB 3779 and HB 4141.

Reused or preserved without fresh full rereview

• PASS-01’s unchanged substantive findings, source IDs, claim IDs, tables, examples other than E8, and outstanding gaps.
• The coordinator’s statement that the other 27 scalar quantities matched. That coordinator work was not independently reproduced.
• S_OR-P1-S025’s 2024 GovInfo PDF as a historical source record. PASS-02 relied on the fresh current OLRC section displays for the corrected current federal wording.
• PASS-01’s secondary current codifications were not converted into official-source verification.

Failed or not completed

• The official current Oregon Chapter 697 URL returned 403.
• No exhaustive Oregon Bulletin, rule-filing, fee-adjustment, successor-bill, or case-law search was conducted.
• No named-provider registration lookup, contract review, advertising-flow review, or federal fact application was performed.
• No application, purchase, account change, contact, Chrome control, other Chat, private-data access, local write, site change, or publication action occurred.
• This self-check describes the researcher’s bounded work. It is not a coordinator review, independent review, legal opinion, or Oregon-wide completion.

END S_OR PASS-02