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Saturday 1 August 2015

Credit Card Hotline Causes Next Fight Over Consumer Bureau

By Cornelius Nunev


The latest fight over the CFPB involves a charge card hotline. The hotline would take grievances and other information directly from consumers. The agency would compile the data and choose to act when appropriate. However, banks and card issuers want re-strictions placed on the data. This would help keep all cash advance information private.

Credit cards to get crowdsourcing penalties

The latest issue of contention concerning the beleaguered Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a credit card hotline that would be used to get com-plaints about charge card issuers from customers, according to Daily Finance. Consumers can call in to report abuse, and that data would be disseminated by the Bureau to the appropriate state regulatory bodies. The basic idea is that the information would be crowdsourcing for grievances. Then, government officials would get the complaints and fine card issuers. They would not even make an effort to determine what the problem was first. Bloomberg reports that card issuers and banks are attempting to keep a private database so that only the few individuals that need to be involved will be.

Ways to stop data from flowing

Data needs to be private for banks. The flow of raw data can hurt a bank's image quite a bit. Right now, the complaint line will start with the Consumer Financial Protection Bu-reau. This is anticipated to occur on July 21. In its current for-mat, any person could access the complaint data and see every-thing said about every charge card issuer that it tracks. It is true that bank and card issuers may not want the data out so nobody knows what is really going on. It is also essential to consider some people will always com-plain about fees, no matter how reasonable they're. It could be terrible for the public data to be streaming like that.

Consumer bureau future

The job of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is to monitor anything involving customer credit. This includes debit cards, charge cards, payday loans and mortgages. Congress has been fighting over the organization. Reuters reports that there were three bills introduced to limit the bureau recently including two on the director. With one bill, a director would be required before the CFPB could get to work. Another would make it so a five member panel would replace the one director. Congressional Republicans have made it clear they're not in favor of Warren, the adviser to the White House who is assisting in getting the bureau ready for operation. The bureau may not actually start in July as anticipated.




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