CFPB Moves Forward With Plan To Include Ratings For Complaint Handling

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is moving forward with its plan to include a consumer survey at the completion of the complaint-filing process, according to a publication in today’s Federal Register.

Comments are being accepted on the proposal until December 29.

According to the report:

The purpose of this information collection is to incorporate a short survey into the complaint closing process. Consumers will have the option to provide feedback on the company’s response to and handling of their complaint via all channels including online, phone, fax, and mail. The results of this feedback will be shared with the company that responded to the complaint to inform its complaint handling. The feedback will also be used to inform the Bureau’s work to supervise companies, enforce federal consumer financial laws, write better rules and regulations, and monitor the market for consumer financial products and services. Consistent with the Bureau’s policy statement on Disclosure of Consumer Complaint Data, the Bureau will evaluate the data collected from consumer feedback before publication on the Consumer Complaint Database. The Bureau anticipates publication of consumer feedback to highlight positive company behavior, provide the public with timely and understandable information about consumer financial products and services, and improve the functioning, transparency, and efficiency of markets for such products and services. Only those feedback narratives for which opt-in consumer consent is obtained, and to which robust personal information scrubbing standard and methodology is applied, will be eligible for publication.

The intention of the survey is to provide consumers with three questions about how the company handled the response to the complaint, to rate the overall response on a scale of one to five stars, and provide a narrative explanation in support of the rating. It’s hard to imagine that many consumers are going to provide five-star ratings. The CFPB did not indicate whether the ratings would be made public but did say that some narratives will be published.

Numerous trade groups have come out in opposition

to the proposal, saying the rating system “would further erode consumer privacy and foster the spread of unverified information, noting that the subjective rating system and narrative option could further the dissemination of unreliable and potentially false information into the market.”