Most of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is in a state of frozen animation this week after Trump administration officials ordered a halt to its work.
But one of the agency’s most popular tools for the public — its online consumer complaint portal — is still very much up and running. If you’re struggling with problems at a bank or credit reporting agency, submitting a report may still be worth your while, freeze or no freeze.
The system is designed to clear away customer service hoops by allowing Americans to send in complaints about their financial institutions directly to the CFPB’s searchable database. Cases are then routed back to the company responsible for the issue, which is supposed to respond within about 15 days — though they have up to 60 to offer a final resolution.
Crucially, the back end of the portal is automated, so it shouldn’t be affected by the Trump administration’s work stoppage. Send in a gripe, and it will still be forwarded on to Bank of America, Experian, or whatever debt collector has been lighting up your phone. According to one former CFPB official who spoke with chof360 Finance, turning off the form would take a bit of work by the new administration.
The portal has become an increasingly popular tool since it was launched in 2012, with the number of complaints submitted through it rising from a few hundred thousand each year to 2.7 million in 2024. In the process, it’s developed a fan base on sites like Reddit, where it’s common to find users recommending it to one another as a shortcut to deal with financial services headaches.
About 80% of submissions these days involve problems with credit reports, while complaints about debt collectors and bank accounts make up the next two largest buckets, according to a 2024 Congressional Research Service report.
The vast majority of complaints — 99.6% of them last year — get a timely response, according to the bureau. In about 41% of cases, consumers get some sort of formal relief, while in another 53% they at least get an explanation for the company’s action.
One reason the system seems to work fairly well is that banks and credit bureaus know regulators — and the public — are watching. The complaints are made public on the CFPB website, and agency officials scrutinize them as part of the formal supervision process. When companies don’t offer a reasonable response to a complaint, a regulator can order them to go back and fix the problem. They can also refer the issue to the CFPB’s enforcement arm, which scans the database on its own for potential cases, as well.
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Even when the bureau is fully operational, its staff don’t typically handle individual submissions as case workers. But there are exceptions: The student loan ombudsman, for instance, will sometimes take up consumer complaints directly with debt servicing companies.
Americans can submit consumer complaints to other regulators, such as the Federal Trade Commission — but it essentially amounts to a tip for enforcement officials, who may or may not act on it. The CFPB portal is unique in that it’s designed to both alert regulators and help customers fix their problems on their own through a formalized process.
CFPB officials aren’t the only ones watching over the complaint data, either. State consumer protection regulators can also plug into it, as can members of Congress.
Still, one major concern at the moment is that, despite the automated process, companies will feel less pressure to respond seriously to formal complaints if CFPB’s staff remains sidelined for a long period.
“If Elon Musk and other billionaires are successful at stopping the work of the bureau, the quality of the company’s responses will degrade,” the former official said. “If you’re a company and nobody is enforcing the law, why would you do the right thing?”
Jordan Weissmann is a senior reporter at chof360 Finance.
