InfoBytes Blog
Sixteen State Attorneys General urge the CFPB to maintain the public consumer complaint database
On June 4, the New York Attorney General, Barbara Underwood, along with fourteen other state Attorneys General submitted a comment letter in response to the CFPB’s Request for Information (RFI) on the public reporting of consumer complaints, previously covered by InfoBytes here. The Attorneys General highlight the utility of the CFPB’s consumer complaint database, stating it “has been an invaluable resource for identifying trends and patterns,” and noting its usefulness in investigations into certain companies “whose misconduct was initially brought to [their] attention through a critical mass of complaints filed with the CFPB.” The letter also comments on the database’s benefit to the public for (i) empowering consumers to educate themselves; (ii) incentivizing companies to treat consumers fairly; and (iii) potentially revealing patterns of widespread misconduct. The coalition concludes the letter by urging the CFPB to maintain the public database.
Additionally, on the same day, the New Jersey Attorney General, Gurbir Grewal, responded to the same RFI with similar sentiments but also emphasized that eliminating or reducing the public availability of the database “would conflict with the open-government principles of the Freedom of Information Act” (FOIA) because FOIA requires government agencies to proactively disclose frequently requested records. According to Grewal, the Bureau receives a substantial number of requests for consumer complaint records and this number will likely increase without the public database.