Bucks Blog: The Most Common Consumer Complaints

Consumer complaints to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau were most often about mortgages and credit cards, according to a summary the agency issued Thursday.

The federal agency began taking complaints about credit cards in July 2011 and has gradually added other categories, including mortgages, bank accounts, private student loans and other consumer loans. Most recently, it added credit reporting as a category, and is working to add others including payday loans and debt collection.

The agency this month expanded its publicly available searchable database of complaints, and is encouraging analysis of the data. The database now contains about 90,000 complaints, the agency said. The agency also published a “snapshot” of the more than 131,000 complaints received from July 2011 through February of this year. (The number of complaints in the summary is larger than in the database because it includes complaints that were referred to other regulatory agencies,  found to be incomplete or are pending further review, the agency said.)

The summary shows that about half of the 131,000 complaints received concern mortgages — as might be expected, given the extended fallout of the housing crisis. The most common complaints concerned problems consumers encountered when they were unable to make payments, like issues with loan modifications or foreclosures.

“The complaints indicate consumer confusion persists around the process and requirements for obtaining loan modifications and refinancing,” the report said, particularly on issues involving submission of documents, payment trial periods and allocation of payments.

Roughly a quarter of complaints received by the agency overall related to credit cards, with billing disputes the most common problem.

More than 80 percent of the total complaints have been sent to companies for review and response. Companies have responded to 95 percent of complaints received, the report said.

The database includes companies’ description of actions they have taken to address the complaint. A company may label the complaint, for instance, as “closed, with monetary relief.”

Consumers can review and dispute the company’s response, and the agency uses that feedback to decide if the complaint warrants further investigation.

“By sharing these complaints with the public, we are creating greater transparency in consumer financial products and services,” Richard Cordray, the agency’s director, said at a public hearing in Des Moines, where the expansion of the database was announced.

Have you complained to the Consumer Financial Protection Agency? What was the result?

Article source: http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/28/the-most-common-consumer-complaints/?partner=rss&emc=rss