As the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB [1]) approaches one million complaints handled in its five-year history, mortgages have taken a back seat behind debt collection as the most complained-about financial product, according to theBureau’s latest monthly complaint snapshot [2] released Tuesday.
As of August 1, 2016, the CFPB has handled approximately 954,000 complaints on various financial products. For the longest time, mortgages were the most complained-about product, but they were recently surpassed by debt collection complaints. The CFPB began accepting complaints about mortgages on December 1, 2011, and has since handled nearly a quarter of a million (239,703) complaints. The Bureau began accepting complaints about debt collection a year and a half later, on July 10, 2013, but has accepted more complaints in that category (254,773) than mortgages or any other category in just three years.
Mortgages were the third-most complained about financial product in July 2016, according to the report. First was debt collection (6,546) and second was credit reporting (5,382). In July, the Bureau took in 3,910 complaints about mortgages. These three categories combined for about two-thirds of the complaints the Bureau received in July.
The monthly complaint snapshot highlighted bank account or service complaints, on which the Bureau has received approximately 94,200 complaints in the last five years.
“Complaints about the use of consumer and credit reporting data for account screening are increasingly common,” the report stated. “Consumers frequently mention learning of a furnisher’s past negative reporting to both specialty checking account reporting and national credit reporting companies when they attempt to open a new bank account. Consumers also express concern over the difficulty that they have addressing potential errors on their reports.”
The three main credit reporting agencies, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion, were the top three complained-about companies in July, with complaint totals of 1,430; 1,247; and 1,077. The company that has received the most complaints over five years is Bank of America with 57,199.
Click here [2] to view the complete CFPB complaint snapshot for August 2016.