You will feel right at home with the CFPB’s newly augmented web-based public-facing complaints database. In accordance with its Final Policy Statement issued on March 19, 2015, the CFPB began publishing consumer complaint narratives. There are about 7,700 narratives in the database, which have been collected since March 2015. The narratives are scrubbed of all personal information in accordance with the methodology specified in the Final Policy Statement, which requires reading around numerous redactions (noted by XXX).
According to the CFPB, over half of all consumers consented to allow the CFPB to include the substance of their complaints in the database. The database reflects over 39,000 complaints received since March 19, 2015 when the Bureau started collecting narratives. So we assume the Bureau is still in the process of scrubbing about 12,000 additional narratives that will appear over time.
Complaints about mortgages, debt collection, and credit reporting accounted for about 70% of the complaints received since March 19, 2005 and about 70% of the narratives posted so far. Debt collection narratives slightly outpaced mortgage narratives even though the number of mortgage complaints received during this time period exceeded the number of debt collection complaints. Payday loans are at the other end of the spectrum. Despite the Bureau’s intense scrutiny and criticism of these products, payday loans account for less than 1% of the total complaints received since March 19, 2015.
The good news: Responses to about 97% of complaints submitted since March 19, 2015 were timely and only about 18% of consumers disputed those responses.