Methodology & Data Sources

Data Source

PlainComplaint uses data from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) (Consumer Complaint Database). The CFPB is a United States government agency established in 2010 under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Its Consumer Complaint Database is the largest public collection of consumer complaints about financial products and services in the United States, containing millions of individual complaint records dating back to 2011.

The CFPB collects complaints from consumers about financial products and services and forwards them to the relevant company for a response. Complaints are published in the public database after the company responds or after 15 calendar days, whichever comes first. The agency does not verify the accuracy of complaint allegations, and the presence of a complaint does not indicate that a company has violated any law or regulation.

How Consumers File Complaints

Consumers can file complaints with the CFPB through its website (consumerfinance.gov/complaint), by phone, mail, fax, or email. When submitting a complaint, consumers select a product category (such as credit reporting, debt collection, or mortgage), describe the issue they experienced, identify the company involved, and specify what resolution they seek. The CFPB forwards the complaint to the company, which typically has 15 days to respond. Responses are categorized as "Closed with explanation," "Closed with monetary relief," "Closed with non-monetary relief," "Closed without relief," or "Closed."

What Data Is Published

The CFPB publishes the following fields for each complaint: the date received, product and sub-product categories, the issue and sub-issue reported, the company name, the state where the consumer is located, the company's response type, whether the response was timely, and whether the consumer disputed the company's response. To protect consumer privacy, the CFPB does not publish consumer names, account numbers, or other personally identifiable information. Consumer narratives (free-text descriptions of the problem) are published only when the consumer opts in.

How We Aggregate the Data

Our data pipeline transforms raw CFPB complaint records into searchable, aggregated pages:

  1. Download: We download the full CFPB complaint dataset as a CSV bulk export from the official data portal.
  2. Parse and validate: Each complaint record is parsed, validated for completeness, and normalized. Company names are standardized to group subsidiaries and name variations where the CFPB has already done so.
  3. Company profiles: Complaints are aggregated by company to compute total complaint counts, timely response rates, dispute rates, relief percentages, first and last complaint dates, top product categories, and top issues.
  4. Product categories: Complaints are grouped by the CFPB's product taxonomy to show which product types generate the most complaints and which companies lead in each category.
  5. Issue categories: Complaints are grouped by the consumer-reported issue to identify the most common problems across all companies and products.
  6. State-level statistics: Complaints are attributed to states based on the consumer's reported location. We compute state-level complaint volumes, top companies, top products, and top issues.
  7. Yearly trends: Complaint data is aggregated by year and month to show how complaint volumes change over time for individual companies and the overall database.
  8. Search indexing: Company names are indexed to support fast full-text search across the database.

No data is fabricated, interpolated, or editorially modified. All values come directly from the CFPB dataset. Where we compute derived metrics (percentages, rankings, counts), the methodology is straightforward aggregation (counts, sums, and ratios) applied to the source data.

Update Frequency

The CFPB updates its complaint database daily. PlainComplaint refreshes its processed database quarterly to incorporate new complaints, updated company responses, and corrections. Between refreshes, the most recently filed complaints may not yet appear on PlainComplaint. For the absolute latest complaint data, visit the CFPB directly at consumerfinance.gov.

Data Limitations

  • Complaint data reflects only those consumers who chose to file with the CFPB. Many dissatisfied consumers never file complaints, so the database does not represent all customer experiences.
  • Complaint volume is heavily influenced by company size. A bank with 50 million customers will naturally receive far more complaints than one with 50,000 customers. Raw complaint counts should not be used as the sole measure of company quality.
  • The CFPB does not verify whether the consumer's allegations in a complaint are accurate. A complaint being filed does not mean the company did anything wrong.
  • Geographic data is based on the consumer's reported location, not the company's location. A complaint attributed to California means the consumer lives in California, not that the problem occurred there.
  • Product and issue categories are defined by the CFPB's taxonomy and selected by the consumer at filing time. Miscategorization is possible.
  • Between PlainComplaint database refreshes, our data may lag the CFPB's live database by up to one quarter.

What Is NOT Included

PlainComplaint does not include: individual consumer narratives (complaint descriptions), personally identifiable consumer information, complaints that the CFPB has not yet published, complaints about non-financial companies, or complaints filed with other agencies (such as the FTC, FDIC, or state attorneys general). We also do not include the CFPB's internal processing notes or complaint referral information.

Financial Disclaimer

This site does not provide financial, tax, or investment advice. PlainComplaint presents public government data for informational purposes only. Complaint data is one of many factors to consider when evaluating a financial company. Always consult a qualified financial advisor before making financial decisions.

Contact

Questions about our methodology or data? Contact us — we welcome feedback and corrections.