Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says it now wants to hear from borrowers who have had problems with their private student loans. The CFPB has oversight on these loans and even has a ombudsman who is supposed to help borrowers and review complaints. Students typically take out private loans once they have exhausted their federal loan options. Federal loans - which should be a student's first choice if they need to borrow - offer some friendly terms, particularly if a new grad can't land a job. In fact, you can have your federal debt wiped out if you work in certain fields after graduation.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced Monday that it had ordered three subsidiaries of American Express to refund about $85 million to roughly a quarter-million consumers for violating consumer protection laws. In addition, several federal agencies fined the credit card giant $27.5 million. The CFPB said illegal activity at the American Express subsidiaries was uncovered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Utah Department of Financial Institutions during a regular examination of American Express Centurion Bank.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been accepting consumer complaints about credit cards for close to a year. Today, the agency made a database of those complaints available online. You can see the names of the card issuers griped about, the gist of the complaint and company's response and the consumer's zip code. The CFPB says it has received 16,840 credit card complaints, with the most common complaint involving billing disputes. The agency sent 84 percent of those complaints to the card issuers, while the rest went to other regulators or were incomplete.

Hey everybody, National Financial Literacy Month has arrived! It's scheduled to overlap with the tail end of tax season, which is always a good time to take a moment to review your finances and set up a plan for the coming year. Think of it as spring cleaning for both your file cabinets and your wallet. Get started with information from two government resources: MyMoney.gov and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau . Celebrate this weekend at these events: --- See the Rev. Billy preach against the evils of consumerism at 7 p.m. tonight (Friday)

Apparently, when people transfer money to relatives outside the U.S., they are dinged by hidden fees. The result is that those family members get less than expected. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau today adopted a rule that generally will require money transfer providers to disclose all the fees and the exchange rate upfront. And these providers are going to have to investigate disputes and fix errors. “With these new protections, international money transfers will be more reliable.

Imagine showing off your new car to friends and family only to get a call from the dealer — sometimes weeks later — saying your financing has fallen through. You're given the option of returning the car or signing a new sales agreement with terms that are likely less favorable. If you're like many buyers, consumer lawyers say, you will be too embarrassed to send the car back and opt to pay more instead. Consumer lawyers call this yo-yo financing, when dealers let buyers leave with a car and then reel them in again to say the agreement has changed.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Department of Education issued a report on the status of private student loans. Americans owe more than $150 billion on such loans - much less than on federal loans - but these private loans don't have borrower-friendly repayment plans and they're poorly understood by those who take them out. When you hear graduates complain about the weight of student loans, it's the private kind they're typically talking...

Thousands of consumers have complained to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau about loan servicing and loan modification problems. Gripes include mistakes by servicers in applying payments, trouble fixing errors, an overabundance of paper work and the inability to find anyone at the servicer to help. Another mortgage mess story? No, this is about private student loans - although the regulator notes that both industries share similar problems. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released its annual report on private loans.

Many consumers are aware that the big three credit reporting agencies - TransUnion, Experian and Equifax - maintain credit files on us and that we are entitled to a free copy of our report annually. But what's less known is that there are many other national specialty consumer reporting companies that collect data on us, and they, too, must provide a free report annually to us. These companies track such things as our employment, medical payments, tenant history and insurance claims.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is proposing a change to the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act so that stay-at-home spouses and partners can get a credit card. The 2009 requires banks to determine whether applicants have the ability to pay bills before issuing them plastic under their name. This was created so that banks wouldn't allow people without means of repaying from opening up credit card accounts and getting in over their heads. But some critics complained that it could prevent stay-at-home spouses, often women, from getting credit in their name.