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Further Consumer Bureau Row Caused By Credit Card Hotline

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By Cornelius Nunev


The latest fight over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau involves a charge card hotline. The hotline would take complaints and other data directly from consumers. The agency would compile the data and choose to act when appropriate. That said, since the Consumer Finan-cial Protection Bureau hasn't disclosed how it proposes to investigate the data, and that is partially why banks want the information restricted. This would help keep all payday loan information private.

Crowdsourcing a thing of penalties for card compa-nies

Lots of debate was put into the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau before the credit card hot-line was considered. This hotline would make it so consumers can complain about credit card issuers and practices they have, Daily Finance reports. The Bureau would take the data consumers call in with reporting a company and give it to the states. The basic idea is the information would be crowdsourcing for grievances. Then, government officials would get the grievances and fine card issuers. They wouldn't even make an effort to determine what the issue was first. Card issuers and banks, according to Bloomberg, are seeking to keep the database private, so only the card issuer, the customer who complained and the right regulatory agency can view data about the individual complaint.

Keeping information hidden

The flow of data can hurt banks a lot, which is they're fighting for private data. When the CFPB begins on July 21, so will the complaint line. In its current for-mat, anybody could access the complaint data and see every little thing said about every credit card issuer that it tracks. Though it may seem that banks and card issuers want to keep this information from the public to keep everyone from seeing the dishonest practices they engage in, there's a fair point to consider; some people are apt to complain about fees regardless of whether those fees were fairly levied. It might be good to get data right from the public. Having no restraints on it might be a bad idea though.

What the future holds

Almost every part of consumer finance, including debit and charge cards, mortgages and payday loans, will be monitored by the CFPB. One organization with all that control has started debate. Congress has fought over it continuously. Reuters reports that there were three bills introduced to limit the bureau recently including two on the director. One of these would give a five member panel control instead of one director while another would keep the CFPB from having power until a director is assigned. Elizabeth Warren is the White House advi-sor getting the bureau ready that has been considered for director, but Republicans are against that. It does not seem likely that it will start operations in July as sched-uled.




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