Thank The CFPB If You Have A Credit Card

A while back, I posted about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s new Consumer Complaint Database.  Well the database has been up for more than a year now and a new report has indicated how CFPB is helping consumers:

The report finds that nearly 40 percent of credit card complaints made to the CFPB have resulted in tangible relief to the consumer, with a median relief amount of $128. Additionally, non-monetary relief provided by the CFPB has included such actions as adjusting someone’s interest rates or correcting the records of a credit reporting agency. The CFPB has helped nearly 10,000 consumers get some relief on their credit card issues. PIRG also found that consumers were most likely to complain about billing disputes, with the next most popular complaints involving difficulties with APR or interest rates and trouble with identify theft, fraud, and embezzlement.

Remember, this is an agency vociferously opposed by Republicans.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.