Milestones: Compiling consumer complaints

The Consumer Bureau database

The economic collapse of 2008 was precipitated by alarming trends in the financial marketplace that, for the most part, people didn’t see until it was too late.

As America picked up the pieces, the newly-created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) created a unique opportunity for researchers at Frontier Group to better understand the scope, severity and patterns of threats that consumers face in the financial marketplace — and to use that information to educate consumers and policymakers.

Originally dreamed up by then-professor Elizabeth Warren, and made real with the help of PIRG’s advocacy and organizing, the CFPB represented a revolutionary step forward for consumers. For the first time, the public could rely on a federal agency with the sole mission of protecting them in the financial marketplace — not just from predatory mortgage companies, but also from unscrupulous or careless banks, debt collectors, credit agencies and more.

The key to unlocking the CFPB’s full potential? The agency’s consumer complaint database — a massive record of any problems consumers might be having, and therefore a way to better educate consumers and policymakers on how to mitigate threats in the marketplace.

As we described it, the bureau’s complaint database created a two-way flow of information that was a model of “effectiveness and responsiveness”: Consumers could register complaints with the federal government, which would then forward those complaints to the responsible company, keep track of the company’s response, and take appropriate action if that response was inadequate.

Combing through data, finding patterns, getting results

In September 2013, Frontier Group published “Big Banks, Big Complaints,” written by Tony Dutzik and Spencer Alt of Frontier Group, and Ed Mierzwinski, Laura Murray and Ashleigh Giliberto of PIRG. For the report, we sliced and diced nearly 19,000 complaints about banks.

The team described how “banks have often taken advantage of consumers through excessive fees, hidden charges, and other abusive practices.” Researchers found that Wells Fargo was the most complained-about bank — and not long thereafter, the CFPB caught Wells Fargo scamming its customers with expensive fake accounts, ultimately leading to a $3 billion fine.

This report and those that soon followed — analyses of complaints about credit bureaus, debt collectors, student loans and more — were covered in The New York Times and The Washington Post. Each report and new story not only helped consumers protect themselves, but also gave them a better understanding of the resources available to them through the CFPB.

Defending the bureau’s mission

From the moment of its creation, the CFPB routinely came under attack from financial companies that preferred a return to the Wild West days of pre-2008.

So one function of Frontier Group’s consumer reports was to demonstrate how necessary and useful this agency actually was. The arrival of the Trump administration in 2016 made that function critical. To defend the agency against an administration hostile to its mission, we published a steady stream of new reports highlighting the CFPB’s role in protecting consumers, with the dual aim of uncovering consumer problems and educating the public that their new cop on the beat was at risk of being dismantled.

Under the Trump administration, the CFPB dramatically scaled back its consumer protection efforts. But our work was part of a broader campaign to protect some of the bureau’s key functions, including its continued operation of a public complaint database. The public supported the effort; in 2017, the New York Times wrote that the CFPB “may be too popular” for its opponents to sideline.

About this series: PIRG and The Public Interest Network have achieved much more than we can cover on this page. You can find more milestones of our work on research below. You can also explore an interactive timeline featuring more of our network’s research milestones.