Consumer Group Attacks CFPB Plan to Limit Complaints

A consumer advocacy group said that potential changes to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s complaint system could make it harder for people to file complaints about credit reporting companies, debt collectors, banks and other businesses.

The National Consumer Law Center said in a Friday (Jan. 30) press release that a notice on the Federal Register filed that day by the CFPB aims to change the complaint system.

The group said the CFPB “appears to be responding” to a Jan. 27 letter sent to it by the Consumer Data Industry Association. The NCLC said the CDIA’s suggested changes to the CFPB’s complaint system would reduce the number of complaints filed by requiring consumers to supply sensitive information, allowing only a certain number of complaints per phone number, and restricting IP addresses from submitting complaints from multiple consumers.

“Last year, consumers filed nearly 5 million complaints with the CFPB regarding credit reporting, mostly against the Big Three credit bureaus, one of the worst oligopolies in this country,” Chi Chi Wu, director of consumer reporting and data advocacy at the NCLC, said in the release.

“Those numbers reflect the massive issues caused by mistakes and other problems that people have with their credit report. But instead of fixing these problems, which is supposed to be CFPB’s mission, Russell Vought and his cronies appear ready to bow to the industry’s demands to sweep the problem under the rug by suppressing the volume of complaints.”

Vought is the director of the Office of Management and Budget and acting director of the CFPB.

In its Jan. 27 letter to the CFPB, the CDIA said it has been urging the agency for more than a decade to ensure that its complaint intake system receives information that is accurate and helps the CFPB carry out its duties.

The CDIA said the complaint portal currently has issues that include allowing consumers to submit disputes about the accuracy of information on credit reports as complaints, letting consumers misattribute complaints to consumer reporting agencies when the conduct relates to another party, and failing to flag or segregate complaints submitted by fraudulent credit repair organizations.

“The Bureau should take additional steps to ensure that only legitimate complaints are accepted by the complaint portal in the first instance,” the CDIA said in its letter.

The group suggested that the CFPB should make it clear that consumers should only submit complaints if they have already contacted the service provider and did not get a satisfactory response, that third parties submitting complaints on behalf of someone else must have legal authority to do so, and that knowingly providing incorrect information can be prosecuted criminally.

The CDIA also suggested that the agency monitor and restrict IP addresses to block bots, implement two-factor authentication using a phone number, and require third parties to identify their relationship to the person on whose behalf they are submitting the complaint.