FCCPA: Florida Consumer Collection Practices Act

By Steve Levine · Updated July 2, 2026 · 7 min read

Quick Answer

The FCCPA (Florida Consumer Collection Practices Act, Fla. Stat. § 559.55 et seq.) is Florida's state debt-collection law. It bans a list of abusive collection practices — harassment, threats, contacting a consumer who is represented by an attorney, and trying to collect a debt the collector knows is not legitimately owed — and, unlike the federal FDCPA, it applies to original creditors (banks, hospitals, mortgage servicers) collecting their own debts, not just third-party debt collectors. A consumer who proves a violation can recover actual damages plus statutory damages of up to $1,000, along with court costs and attorney's fees, and when the same unlawful practice hits thousands of accounts, FCCPA claims are often brought as class actions.

On this page

What Is the FCCPA?
FCCPA vs. FDCPA: Why the Florida Law Is Broader
What the FCCPA Prohibits
Damages: What a Violation Is Worth
How FCCPA Claims Become Class Actions
Frequently Asked Questions

What Is the FCCPA?

The Florida Consumer Collection Practices Act is Florida's state-level answer to abusive debt collection. It lives in Part VI of Chapter 559 of the Florida Statutes, starting at section 559.55 — you can read the full text on the Florida Legislature's Online Sunshine site. The heart of the law is section 559.72, which lists specific things no one collecting a consumer debt in Florida is allowed to do, and section 559.77, which gives consumers a private right to sue when someone does them anyway.

"Consumer debt" under the FCCPA means an obligation a person incurred primarily for personal, family, or household purposes — credit cards, medical bills, mortgages, auto loans, utility bills, and the like. Business debts are outside the statute. The law also regulates who may operate as a "consumer collection agency" in Florida through a registration requirement, but the prohibited-practices and damages provisions are what drive most lawsuits.

FCCPA vs. FDCPA: Why the Florida Law Is Broader

The federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA, 15 U.S.C. § 1692 et seq.) generally applies only to third-party "debt collectors" — companies whose business is collecting debts owed to someone else. A bank calling about its own credit card, a hospital billing its own patient, or a mortgage servicer collecting on a loan it originated is usually not a "debt collector" under the federal statute.

The FCCPA closes that gap. Its prohibited-practices section applies to any "person" collecting a consumer debt, which Florida courts have consistently read to include original creditors collecting their own accounts. That is why claims that would fail under the FDCPA — a bank sending collection letters on its own credit card, for example — can still proceed under Florida law. It is the theory behind cases like the PNC Bank FCCPA class action, in which a Florida customer alleges the bank kept sending her collection letters after she told it to stop and after it knew she was represented by counsel.

The two statutes are designed to work together, not compete. The FCCPA expressly states that it is in addition to the FDCPA, and that where the two laws are inconsistent, the provision giving the consumer greater protection controls. In practice, Florida plaintiffs often plead both statutes side by side when a third-party collector is involved, and rely on the FCCPA alone when the defendant is an original creditor.

What the FCCPA Prohibits

Section 559.72 lists specific prohibited practices. The ones that come up most often in litigation include:

· Harassment: willfully communicating with the debtor (or their family) with such frequency that it can reasonably be expected to harass, or willfully engaging in conduct that can reasonably be expected to abuse or harass.
· Collecting debts not legitimately owed: claiming, attempting, or threatening to enforce a debt the collector knows is not legitimate, or asserting a legal right the collector knows does not exist. This is the workhorse provision — it covers inflated balances, unauthorized fees, debts already paid or discharged, and amounts a contract or statute never allowed.
· Contacting a represented consumer: communicating with a debtor the collector knows is represented by an attorney with respect to the debt, when the attorney's name and address are known or easily available — unless the attorney fails to respond or consents to direct contact.
· Threats and abuse: threatening force or violence, threatening to communicate false credit information, using profane or abusive language, or impersonating a law-enforcement officer or government agency.
· Disclosure to third parties: communicating information about the debt to the debtor's employer before a judgment, or publicizing the debt to shame the debtor into paying.

Two features make these provisions bite harder than they may look. First, several of them — including the harassment and illegitimate-debt provisions — require that the collector acted with knowledge or willfulness, so the fights in court are often about what the company knew and when. Second, because the statute reaches original creditors, routine business conduct like automated dunning letters, servicing-fee charges, and collection call campaigns can violate the FCCPA even when no outside collection agency ever touched the account.

Damages: What a Violation Is Worth

Section 559.77 gives consumers a private civil action. A plaintiff who proves a violation can recover:

· Actual damages — out-of-pocket losses and, in appropriate cases, emotional-distress damages caused by the unlawful collection conduct.
· Statutory damages of up to $1,000 — awarded on top of actual damages, without the consumer having to prove any monetary loss.
· Court costs and reasonable attorney's fees — the fee-shifting provision is what makes small-dollar claims economical to bring.
· Punitive damages and injunctive relief — available in the court's discretion in appropriate cases.

FCCPA claims are generally subject to a two-year statute of limitations, running from the date of the violation. Because each unlawful letter or call can be framed as its own violation, the timeline questions in these cases can get complicated — another reason represented plaintiffs tend to fare better than pro se ones. One caveat that applies here as everywhere in consumer litigation: a plaintiff still needs a concrete injury to sue in federal court under Article III standing rules, which is why some statutory-damages-only collection cases get pushed back to state court — a dynamic OCA has covered in the FDCPA no-injury standing context. Florida state courts are not bound by the federal standing doctrine, which makes state court an attractive forum for pure statutory-damages FCCPA claims.

How FCCPA Claims Become Class Actions

Debt-collection violations are rarely one-offs. A form letter goes to everyone in a portfolio; an unauthorized fee gets coded into a servicing system and charged on every account; a dialer keeps calling numbers after consumers revoke consent. When the same practice hits many Florida consumers the same way, the claims fit the class-action mold: common conduct, common legal theory, and small individual damages that only make sense to litigate collectively. The statute anticipates this — in a class action, each named plaintiff can recover up to $1,000 in statutory damages, and aggregate statutory damages for the rest of the class are capped at the lesser of $500,000 or 1 percent of the defendant's net worth, plus actual damages and fees.

OCA's coverage shows the range of defendants these cases reach. The PNC Bank lawsuit alleges a national bank violated the FCCPA by continuing to send collection letters to a customer who had demanded it stop — an original-creditor theory the federal FDCPA could not support. The Nationstar/Mr. Cooper Florida mortgage-fee settlement resolved claims that a mortgage servicer charged Florida borrowers convenience fees the plaintiffs alleged were not legitimately owed. And the Sarasota Memorial medical-debt settlement shows the statute reaching hospital billing practices. Collection conduct also frequently overlaps with other consumer statutes: robocall campaigns can trigger the federal TCPA (see OCA's debt-collection robocall investigation), and reporting a disputed debt to credit bureaus can raise claims under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).

For Florida consumers, the practical takeaway is simple: the FCCPA protects you against your original creditor, not just outside collection agencies, and violations carry statutory damages even without provable monetary loss. If a settlement arises from one of these cases, class members are typically notified by the court-appointed administrator and can file through the official settlement website.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the FCCPA?

The Florida Consumer Collection Practices Act (Fla. Stat. § 559.55 et seq.) is Florida's state debt-collection law. Section 559.72 lists specific prohibited collection practices — including harassment, threats, contacting a consumer the collector knows is represented by an attorney, and trying to collect a debt the collector knows is not legitimate — and section 559.77 lets consumers sue for actual damages, statutory damages of up to $1,000, court costs, and attorney's fees.

How is the FCCPA different from the federal FDCPA?

The biggest difference is who it covers. The federal FDCPA generally applies only to third-party debt collectors — companies collecting someone else's debt. The FCCPA applies to any person collecting a consumer debt, which includes original creditors such as banks, hospitals, mortgage servicers, and lenders collecting their own accounts. Florida courts also read the FCCPA alongside the FDCPA: where the two overlap, the law directs that the provision giving the consumer more protection controls.

What damages can I recover for an FCCPA violation?

Under Fla. Stat. § 559.77, a consumer who proves a violation can recover actual damages plus additional statutory damages of up to $1,000, together with court costs and reasonable attorney's fees. A court may also award punitive damages in appropriate cases and can grant injunctive relief. FCCPA claims are generally subject to a two-year statute of limitations.

How do FCCPA claims become class actions?

Debt-collection violations are usually systemic — a form letter, an automated dialing campaign, or a standard fee applied to thousands of accounts. When the same unlawful practice hits many Florida consumers the same way, plaintiffs can pursue the claims as a class action, and the statute expressly contemplates class recoveries, with aggregate statutory damages in a class case capped at the lesser of $500,000 or 1 percent of the defendant's net worth.