Consumer Protection

The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau announced last week that it has expanded the Consumer Complaint Database it launched last summer, increasing the number of complaints about credit card companies from 19,000 or so to 90,000. The added data comes from additional players such as mortgage companie...

A Federal Trade Commission investigation of the U.S. credit reporting industry turned up some dismal findings for consumers. The comprehensive study found that 5 percent of consumers identified errors on one of their three major credit reports that were significant enough to affect their eligibility...

Bank of America's online banking operations crashed last Friday, cutting customers off from their accounts and reportedly disrupting the customer phone service to boot. It was the 1st day of the month -- a day when customers typically access their accounts to make sure paychecks have been deposited...

Discover Bank is refunding approximately $200 million to more than 3.5 million customers under a joint enforcement action by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. Discover will also pay a $14 million civil money penalty, with half going to the U.S. Treasury ...

Travel always seems to elicit great customer service stories -- that is, great stories from my perspective as a person who writes about CRM; not great as in "my experience while traveling was wonderful, stress-free and restored my faith in humanity." As fodder for columns, they're great. They're o...

Consumers face a number of hurdles if they want to switch banks -- which they increasingly do, as their banks continue to raise fees, raise minimum balances, and create entirely new charges. Some bank policies are, in fact, designed to make it challenging -- and expensive -- for customers to walk aw...