CFPB Complaint Portal: Fix the Portal Before It Breaks Trust

Driving the news: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) consumer complaint system was created to help consumers fix real problems. Today, the portal is being hijacked by fraudulent credit repair scams that use bots and boilerplate language to erase accurate credit history – for a subscription-based fee.

The big picture: The current portal conflates disputes, which are subject to the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), and complaints expressing dissatisfaction with a financial product or service, resulting in inflated complaint numbers. Further, fraudulent credit repair organizations are misusing the complaint portal to seek the removal of accurate information, with credit repair organizations filing on behalf of consumers or directing consumers step-by-step on how to submit disputes, even where the dispute is knowingly fraudulent.

Why it matters: The portal was meant to give people a voice and provide accountability when the system failed them. Instead, it’s become a shortcut for FCRA dispute requests and an opportunity for bad actors to prey on consumers who are trying to improve their credit. Fraudulent requests are flooding the portal every month, hoping that credit bureaus cave under the pressure. These aren’t mistakes. They’re facts: late payments, defaults, bankruptcies. And now, they’re being erased for a fee.

Credit reporting agencies have seen portal submissions skyrocket—up 1,050% since 2022. And here’s the truth: 95 to 98 percent of those complaints aren’t coming from consumers anymore. They’re coming from credit repair organizations. Bots are doing the heavy lifting, flooding the system with copy-and-paste requests, turning a tool for accountability into a weapon for profit.

How we got here: The previous leadership at the CFPB unilaterally and without statutory authorization stripped out the screening tools that helped keep FCRA disputes from being improperly accepted through the portal. At the same time, Bureau leadership made clear its expectation that institutions would respond within an arbitrarily determined fifteen-day window, even for complaints that are actually FCRA disputes.  Credit repair organizations saw the opening—and they took it. They bypass the law’s two-step process: dispute first, complaint second. Instead, they force reinvestigations Congress never intended. And the CFPB? It expects credit bureaus to respond to everything—even TikTok videos and malware-laden zip files. That’s not oversight. That’s chaos.

The current CFPB leadership is aware of the problem and is attempting to address the situation. But more can be done to fix the portal. 

Bottom line: The CFPB portal should be a shield for fairness, not a loophole for profiteers. When trust breaks, everyone pays—let's fix it.