Before I hand a company my money, I want to know what happened to the last people who did.
For more than a decade, the federal government made that easy. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) ran a free public database where you could read, in real customers’ own words, what their bank, lender, debt collector or credit bureau had put them through.
On Aug. 14, the CFPB pulled the plug on those stories. The agency announced it would stop publishing complaint narratives and the charts that went with them, effective immediately.
The reasoning? According to the CFPB, the stories were unverified and one-sided, and they hurt companies’ reputations for no good reason.
Guess who agrees. As ProPublica reported, the credit bureaus’ trade group, the Consumer Data Industry Association, spent years attacking the database, at one point comparing it to a Yelp for financial services.
ProPublica also found the agency removed the option for consumers to agree to have their stories made public. So even if a future administration wants to bring the narratives back, complaints filed from now on can’t be published after the fact.
That’s a big loss. According to the CFPB’s 2025 annual report, the agency received more than 6.6 million complaints last year — about 88% of them about credit reporting.
Those stories exposed real problems. ProPublica pointed to a 2023 complaint about a tribal lender from a borrower who described paying $11,000 for a $1,200 loan, at 790% interest. That’s the kind of thing you want to read before you sign, not after.
“Americans deserve user-friendly, searchable access to details about these issues,” said Mike Litt, consumer campaign director at PIRG, in a statement after the announcement.
I’ve been a consumer reporter for more than 35 years, and here’s what I’ve learned: When the referee leaves the field, you’d better start keeping score yourself. Here are six ways to do it.
1. The bare-bones complaint data is still there
The database hasn’t disappeared — just the part that told you what actually happened. You can still search complaints by company and see the product, the issue, the date, the state and how the company responded, including whether it responded on time.
That’s less than it used to be, but it’s not nothing. Look for patterns. Dozens of complaints about the same issue at the same company — surprise fees, say, or payments that never got credited — tell you plenty, even without the stories.
Just keep the numbers in perspective. Big banks draw more complaints because they have more customers. Weigh a company’s complaint count against its size, and focus on what people are complaining about.
2. The old stories are archived, if you’re willing to dig
Narratives published through Aug. 14 weren’t destroyed. The CFPB moved them to its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Reading Room as a set of downloadable files covering December 2011 through August 2026.
Here’s the catch: They’re bulk ZIP files, not a searchable website. If you’re comfortable opening a big spreadsheet and searching for a company’s name, it’s a gold mine. If not, it’s a headache.
Either way, the archive stops in August. Whatever a company does to its customers from here on, you won’t read about it there.
3. Your state attorney general is still in the game
Washington may be stepping back, but state attorneys general aren’t. They take consumer complaints, bring enforcement actions and sue companies that get out of line.
Find yours through the National Association of Attorneys General. Then search your AG’s website for the company’s name before you do business with it. If a lender or collector has been sued by your state or settled with it, that’s a red flag you want to see.
Real talk — I’ve made plenty of money mistakes in my life, and I’ve spent decades helping people sidestep the ones they don’t have to make. Sign up for the free Money Talks Newsletter and let my scars save you a few of your own. Free, and worth more than that.
4. Make sure the lender is licensed
This is the step almost nobody takes, and it takes about two minutes.
Mortgage lenders, loan officers and many other nonbank financial companies have to be licensed by the states they operate in. NMLS Consumer Access, a free lookup tool from the state regulators’ licensing system, lets you confirm a company or professional is authorized to do business in your state.
Not licensed? Walk away. No complaint database in the world will protect you from a company that isn’t supposed to be operating in the first place.
For banks and other companies, your state financial regulator is another place to check — and to complain.
And if you’re shopping for a loan, you can compare personal loan offers here before you commit to anyone.
5. Look for a paper trail of lawsuits and enforcement
Government enforcement is the complaint database’s big brother. The CFPB still posts its enforcement actions, searchable by company name, and the Federal Trade Commission keeps a searchable library of its cases and proceedings.
Neither list is complete, and as I’ve written, the CFPB has dropped a long list of cases recently. But if a company has been caught mistreating customers before, you’ll often find the details here.
A plain web search helps, too. Type the company’s name followed by “lawsuit,” “settlement” or “class action,” and read what comes up from real news outlets, not paid review sites.
6. File your complaint anyway
Here’s what hasn’t changed: Filing a complaint with the CFPB still works. The agency says it will keep collecting complaints and sending them to companies, and according to its complaint page, most companies respond within 15 days.
That means somebody at the company has to look at your problem, and that’s often all it takes to get a fee reversed or an error fixed.
For credit report errors, you now have to dispute with the credit bureau first. I explain that change in “The Government Just Made It Harder to Fix Your Credit Report.”
Don’t stop at one agency, either. Send the same complaint to your state attorney general and your state regulator. For more tactics, see “11 Modern Ways to Win a Consumer Complaint When Customer Service Fails.”
The bottom line
Companies behave better when they know people are watching. For more than a decade, millions of ordinary consumers did the watching, one story at a time.
That spotlight is dimmer now. So do your homework before you sign, keep records of everything and complain loudly when you’re wronged.
The government may have stopped sharing your stories in public. That doesn’t mean you have to stop telling them.
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