A huge thank you to Audrey Hood, who writes the Substack newsletter, The Civic Librarian, for agreeing to do this guest post! I’ve been packing and moving all week and barely know what day it is…

By the way, I nearly cried with joy the first time I read Audrey’s newsletter—what a great idea to let more of the public know about the superlative information our government provides and exactly how to access that information in an easily accessible and fun way. And as I mentioned in a previous post, I’m enamored of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), how and why it was created, and the services it provides to help each and every one of us. I’m especially pleased, then, that Audrey chose to give us a look-see into the CFPB’s Consumer Complaint Database.

So, without further commentary from me, enjoy reading Audrey Hood’s post!

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Hi, everyone! I am excited to be a guest writer for Joan this week. It has been wonderful to connect over the past few months, since our respective newsletter topics often naturally complement and inform one another. Joan’s writing has given me several ideas for government information topics to cover, including the subject for this week! Let’s get started.

In Civics This Week

Joan recently made a great post about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). In the post, she mentions the Consumer Complaint Database. For my guest post, I thought it would be fun to take a deep dive into this important resource!

The CFPB makes the news relatively frequently. In the past week or two, you may have seen some coverage (https://www.investopedia.com/cfpb-and-new-york-attorney-general-sue-moneygram-5248658 ) on the joint lawsuit filed by the CFPB and the Attorney General of New York against remittance provider, MoneyGram International, Inc. This lawsuit is an interesting example of how the CFPB works to protect consumer rights. I will highlight another recent example of CFPB action in the next section.

Consumer Complaint Database

One of the responsibilities of the CFPB is to maintain the Consumer Complaint Database. As Joan summarized well in her post, this tool can be used to look up public complaint data and narratives submitted to the CFPB by consumers about financial products such as credit cards, mortgages, and student loans (see details about the data used by the CFPB here, https://www.consumerfinance.gov/data-research/consumer-complaints/).

As that page mentions, it is important to remember that a company may have still harmed consumers even if there are few or no complaints about them. Likewise, many complaints about a company do not necessarily mean that all of their consumers experience harm. The complaints published in the database reflect those filed with the CFPB that the agency then sends to companies for response.  This video produced by the CFPB does a good job of explaining the complaint process:

Now, let’s get to the actual tool itself!

The Consumer Complaint Database features many different search functions and filtering options. I highly recommend clicking the links below the database title and using the advanced search tips to make the most out of your queries.

Let’s start with a basic search, today. At the end of March, the CFPD fined Edfinancial Services (https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-sanctions-edfinancial-for-lying-about-student-loan-cancellation/), a student loan company, $1 million due to consumer complaints that the organization deceived borrowers regarding information on loan forgiveness and repayment. In the following example, I am going to search for consumer complaint data about Edfinancial Services.

Let’s start by searching within company name and filtering by product type (“student loan”) and complaints that include narrative accounts. I am using the automatic date range, which goes back three years from the current day. Here is what the search looks like:

Now let’s look at the results:

You can examine the data by filtering for date and geographic patterns using the “trends” and “map” views. If you’re looking for details into the nature of the complaints, the “list” view is going to give you the most information.

Here, we can sort through consumer complaint records. Click on the complaint record number on the top left of each result to see the full summary. If you want, you can also filter on the left side for the types of complaints or company responses. Here’s a screenshot of a random record further down in the results list:

While the CFPB excludes identifying information about the consumer, each record provides a good amount of detail about complaints filed with EdFinancial Services, especially when you compare across various results. If you wanted to do more research into complaints regarding similar consumer issues filed with other student loan companies, you could try a new search that filters by “student loan” as a product and then select certain issues to narrow down the results, such as “dealing with your lender or servicer”.

In Conclusion

That was a quick peek into using the Consumer Complaint Database. Try a few searches of your own and let us know in the comments what you find out! Thank you again to Joan for featuring me this week. If you head over and subscribe to The Civic Librarian, you will hear from me again next Sunday. Have a great week!

*All screenshots were taken on 4/29/2022.

I’d love to know what you think of this helpful information from The Civic Librarian, Audrey Hood. Will you use it to research financial institutions that you have or will do business with to see where they stand with consumers and the CFPB? Have you ever filed a complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau? Let us know in the comment section below.

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