The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau analyzed several hundred consumer complaints relating to the administration of credit card rewards programs and identified four recurring themes that resulted in consumers not receiving the rewards they were promised: (1) unexpected promotional conditions, (2) devaluation, (3) redemption problems, and (4) revocation. The report is here.
Category Archives: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
The U.S. Supreme Court today, in a 7-2 decision, ruled in favor of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, rejecting a challenge brought by payday lenders to Congress’s decision about how to fund the agency. The case came to the Court after the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals’ unprecedented ruling that funding for the Bureau’s violates […]
Bloomberg’s Evan Weinberger has the story, as well as a link to the opinion, here. (Behind a paywall.) Addendum from Allison: The order granting an injunction is here. CNBC’s story is here.
Junk fees are likely to feature in the election this year, so for that reason alone, it would be useful to know what they are. Sometimes they seem to be defined by examples; you can find such a list of examples (as well as a definition that strikes me as underinclusive) here. Because the very […]
On Tuesday, the CFPB issued an order against Chime Financial, finding that it failed to timely refund consumers’ balances after they closed their accounts. Chime, a financial technology company, is not itself a bank, but partners with regional banks to provide certain mobile banking services. This model deprives consumers of many of the protections of […]
At the House Financial Services Committee April 16, 2024 hearing titled Agency Audit: Reviewing CFPB Financial Reporting & Transparency, Professor Christopher Peterson of Utah, in response to Ranking Member Maxine Waters’ question about why some members of Congress would oppose the CFPB late fee regulation: “I don’t know why you are going to bat for these […]
If the Supreme Court rules in the CFSA case that the CFPB’s funding is unconstitutional, Congress might fund the Bureau via annual appropriations. I wondered what that would mean. The FTC, another consumer protection agency, offers a clue. Now the agencies are not identical; the FTC has antitrust responsibilities and while the two agencies have […]
This looks like important research bearing on the issue of junk fees, among other things. From the Bureau’s newsroom: Today, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued a new report that suggests consumers tend to pay more for products that have more complex pricing structures. The report is based on experiments with multiple rounds of […]
For awhile now, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been scrutinizing the role and responsibilities of data brokers in collecting and selling consumers’ personal data. In a message at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy this week, CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said that a proposed rule to provide greater oversight of third-party […]
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has issued a report examining the growth of financial transactions in online video games and virtual worlds. “These platforms increasingly resemble traditional banking and payment systems that facilitate the storage and exchange of billions of dollars in assets, including virtual currencies. However, consumers report being harmed by scams or theft […]