text: I may have misread your use of examples of judges making law, as if that's a good thing, so I apologize for the sarcasm.  
  
  Still, you seem to want them to make law in THIS case by ignoring the letter of the law and deciding what legislators meant despite some specific definitions.  It seems that even if they looked at the history and discussion of the law, per your own assertion that Congress didn't believe retailers/creditors use deceptive practice, they would have determined that it was considered to make the law apply to creditors as well as third party debt collectors, & consciously chose not to.
  
  Slight correction - charging P&L is not what drops the available recovery to the creditor.  Charging to P&L coincides with turning collection over to a debt collector & that action is what reduces the recovery to whatever the contract is with the debt collector.  It does not change the fact that the original company is still the defined creditor, & can sell the debt to another creditor