For several years, the bureau has run a national database where it posts complaints against banks, mortgage companies, student loan firms, credit agencies and other financial players. It’s been useful for many consumers, but the complaints it displays offer none of the sometimes harrowing details about what actually transpired. Instead, it’s rather dry and colorless: You get squeezed into a category — mortgage servicing complaint, problem with a reverse mortgage, whatever — but no one really gets a taste of the pain and frustration that you went through. The date of your complaint is noted along with your ZIP code, plus a brief description of whether the company resolved your problem.
Under the bureau’s’s expanded system, which went live March 19, consumers can opt to have their complaint narratives posted publicly, after the financial institution confirms that they are indeed customers. Your name and other personally identifying information will be scrubbed from the narrative before it ever goes online. Companies that are the subject of narratives will be able to respond — though only through the use of what the bureau calls “structured” options that capsulize what the company thinks about the allegations, rather than addressing your specifics point by point. Among other choices, companies can say they dispute the facts you present, or they believe the complaint to be the result of an isolated error, or they indicate that in the end, they acted appropriately. They can also decline to make a public response.
Bureau Director Richard Cordray said adding narratives to the existing complaint system should help “shed light on the full consumer perspective behind a complaint. Narratives humanize the problems consumers face in the marketplace.” Whether consumers opt to post a public narrative or not, they will still be able to avail themselves of the bureau’s ongoing service: Once they file a complaint with the bureau, companies will have to respond within 15 days and are expected to “close all but the most complicated complaints within 60 days.” The first batch of narratives are not expected to be posted for several months, allowing banks and others to gear up for this new feature.
Since inaugurating the complaint database system, the bureau has handled nearly 560,000 individual complaints. As of the end of June of last year, 34 percent of all complaints had to do with mortgages — the largest of any category, followed by debt collectors. Of mortgage complaints, 84 percent concerned problems with loan servicing — the handling of mortgage payments, escrows, transfers of accounts and modifications of loan terms, among other issues.