CFPB: Prepaid Complaints Continue Decline in July
Prepaid card-related complaints to the CFPB ticked down in July, the bureau announced in its latest monthly consumer complaint report. The month saw 211 complaints about prepaid products, down 5 percent from 223 prepaid complaints in June and slightly below the monthly average of 215 since the CFPB began tracking prepaid complaints in July 2014. July 2016 also marked the second consecutive month of declining prepaid-related complaints, following a one percent drop in June compared to May.
For the three-month period from May to July 2016, the bureau received an average of 219 prepaid-related complains a month—an 18 percent jump over the same three months of 2015. Despite the increase, prepaid continues to comprise a small percentage of overall consumer complaints to the CFPB. Since the agency began maintaining its complaint database in 2012, just 5,608 of the 954,424 total consumer complaints it has received dealt with a prepaid issue—that’s just over one-half of 1 percent of all complaints.
In this month’s report, the CFPB focused on bank accounts and services—about which the agency has handled 94,207 consumer complaints since July 2011, or about 10 percent of all complaints received since that time. Bank accounts and services ranked as the fifth most-complained about category, trailing closely behind credit card-related complaints, at 99,175. The most commonly cited consumer issues with bank accounts and services were problems with account management—which comprised 45 percent of complaints in the category—and issues with deposits and withdrawals, at 26 percent. Checking accounts were the subject of 64 percent of complaints, while just 6 percent of complaints dealt with savings accounts.
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