Credit card complaints, by the numbers

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We’ve been taking your complaints on credit cards at the CFPB since we officially opened for business on July 21, 2011. Today, we released an interim report on credit card complaints.

Hearing directly from consumers gives us a snapshot of how the consumer finance markets are operating. As Raj Date, Special Advisor to the Treasury Secretary for the CFPB said this morning: “We are learning that there is a lot of consumer confusion about credit card terms. We will continue to work with consumers, credit card companies, government agencies, and others to improve consumer education and ensure CFPB’s regulation, supervision, and enforcement efforts are effective.”

In our first three months, Consumer Response has received more than 5,000 credit card complaints. Companies reported resolving more than 3,100 of these, with consumers disputing these responses in 400 cases, or less than 13 percent of time.

While we’ve only been able to accept complaints on credit cards right now, we’ll begin taking complaints and inquiries related to home mortgages on or about Dec. 1, and we expect to be ready to handle complaints for all financial products and services by the end of 2012.

Today we’re also again asking for your help as we develop our policies.

When you complain to us, our top priority is helping you resolve your problem and protecting your privacy along the way. But we also want to be transparent about our systems, operations, and information we’re receiving – information that, when made public, gives individuals and organizations data they can analyze for patterns and trends. We propose providing a searchable public database that contains various data fields for each complaint, but excludes any fields with personal information. We hope you will tell us what you think about the policy by end of the year.

Taking your complaints and helping you resolve them is one of the most important things we do – so we hope you’ll take a look at our report and proposed policy and let us know what you think.

Sartaj Alag is the CFPB’s Assistant Director for Consumer Response

  • Manningf9

    We need to revamp the regulation that govern the credit bureaus.  The ecomody will stay in the toilet as long as these regulation stay as they are.  The following changes need to be made:
    A:  interest that acculates on a credit card should be deleted:
    B:  Once a collection is paid, the account can not be resold again, and must be removed completely from credit bureau after two years; 
    C:  Collector must receive all supporting document of consumer account before placing in credit bureau:
    D:  If owner of debt sells/transfer debt to collection agency, he can no longer report activity to credit bureau and his original report must be remove (many times the account is sold many time even after it has been paid) ;
    E:  All credit bureaus should have an office with representatives in each state so the public can have direct contact and changes can be made when necessary; 
    F:  The regulations should be change with a committee of public consumers, lawyers and government rep helping to make those changes;
    G:  With these changes will help the economy and those who have made an effort to clear their credit will be able to buy homes and cars and etc.  As it stands it takes 7 yrs of to recover and in this economy that is two long, it should be 2 yrs instead of 7 for items to stay on credit report.
    G: 

  • WEA

    I contacted the 2024357000 number to ask how I can be informed as to when the next congressional meetings will be held regarding changes, updates or modifications to FDCPA and other collections laws. I was advised by the person that answered the phone that she is a switchboard operator and could not direct me. I was given your information from The FTC and was advised that this was where I could be informed. Did I reach the wrong place again? Please assist….

  • http://iphone5australia.net.au/ Micheal

    Prevention is the Key, getting a credit card should be harder than getting a Drivers License.

  • Uni Bul

    The fact that three-quarters of the complaints filed with the CFPB have been resolved and a good number of them are still pending tells me that the process set up by the bureau is working. Of course, we don’t know whether and how many of these consumers had filed a complaint with their card issuers prior to reporting the issue to the CFPB. So we don’t know how an issuer’s response would differ if a complaint were received directly from the consumer, rather than through the CFPB. That would be a very interesting piece of statistic.  http://blog.unibulmerchantservices.com/americans-biggest-credit-card-grievance-billing-disputes

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