Will That Help Consumers?
Markets for financial services often don't work well for consumers. The trial and error
technique that consumers rely on in navigating many markets, such as food and
clothing markets, does not work well when transactions are large and
infrequent. Financial firms who expect to see a customer only once may have
little incentive to provide good service. Because of the complexity of many
financial products, consumers often have less information about the products
than those who sell it. The new consumer complaint facility created by the
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) can be viewed as an attempt to
offset these factors so that financial markets will work better for consumers.
The "Submit a Complaint" Facility
The new facility is deployed on CFPB's web site, where consumers can lodge a complaint
against any financial service provider from whom they have obtained a loan,
lease or other financial service. The consumer registers the complaint with
CFPB, who forwards it to the service provider, who responds to CFPB, who
delivers the response to the consumer who accepts or disputes it.
CFPB records each complaint with the name of the firm involved, the product, the
consumer's state and zip code, the date the complaint was received, the date it
was sent to the firm, the firm's response and whether it was timely, and
whether the consumer disputed the firm's response. While similar complaint
programs exist at the state level, the CFPB program is unique in its use of the
internet as its principal communication device, and in developing a data base
of complaints that is available to the public. The data base includes a
filtering system that allows users to sort data into the specific categories
they want to examine.
The data base grows by the day and the growth will accelerate as consumers become
increasingly aware of the facility. On August 24 when I accessed it, there were
279,498 complaints about the following products or services: mortgages 116,
335, credit cards 38,536, debt collection 36,231, bank accounts or service
34,905, credit reporting 34,625, student loans 8,509, consumer loans 7,896, and
payday loans 2,339. (Yes, I know the components don't quite add to the total,
but write your complaint to CFPB).