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Report | U.S. PIRG Education Fund | Financial Reform

Debt Collectors

Report: Our latest report based on the CFPB's public Consumer Complaint database reviews the most-complained about debt collectors. Funny, a new CFPB complaint "snapshot" does not. The report comes as the CFPB's acting director threatens to make the database non-public. If the CFPB both shuts down the public database and continues to issue industry-friendly reports that don’t give out any real information, the public and marketplace harm is even greater.

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News Release | U.S. PIRG Education Fund | Financial Reform

Unlike CFPB’s “Snapshot,” PIRG report reveals which debt collectors Americans file complaints about most

News Release: Our latest report based on the CFPB's public Consumer Complaint database reviews the most-complained about debt collectors. Funny, a new CFPB complaint "snapshot" does not. The report comes as the CFPB's acting director threatens to make the database non-public. If the CFPB both shuts down the public database and continues to issue industry-friendly reports that don’t give out any real information, the public and marketplace harm is even greater.

> Keep Reading
Report | U.S. PIRG Education Fund | Financial Reform

Shining A Light on Consumer Problems:

Our report, Shining A Light on Consumer Problems: The Case for Public Access to the CFPB’s Financial Complaints Database, details why it is important that the highly successful Consumer Financial Protection Bureau database of over one million consumer complaints remain open to the public, so consumers, researchers and others can study the financial marketplace.

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News Release | U.S. PIRG Education Fund | Financial Reform

New Report Makes Case To Keep CFPB Complaint Database Public

As the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) acting director continues to threaten to hide the agency’s public Consumer Complaint Database from consumers and researchers, a new report makes a strong case to keep the database public. The report from U.S. PIRG Education Fund and Frontier Group was filed as an official public comment in the CFPB’s Request for Information about the database. 

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Blog Post | Financial Reform

Public CFPB Database Comment Period Ends Monday, 4 June at Midnight | Ed Mierzwinski

Monday, June 4, at midnight (ET) marks the deadline for filing public comments on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s latest inward-facing Request For Information (RFI); this one is on the future of the public Consumer Complaint Database, which has been disparaged for years by various bank industry actors and their coin-operated think tanks but most recently by the CFPB’s acting director, Mick Mulvaney. Here's why we are fighting to keep the database public.

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News Release | U.S. PIRG Education Fund | Financial Reform

Consumer Advocates File in Support of Acting CFPB Director Leandra English

This is a joint press release from U.S. PIRG Education Fund and other leading consumer and civil rights organizations explaining our amicus (friend of the court) brief filed today in support of acting CFPB director Leandra English. English was appointed acting director by outgoing director Richard Cordray, but the President has claimed authority to appoint Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney to simultaneously be acting director of the Consumer Bureau. English seeks a preliminary injunction blocking the Mulvaney appointment.

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News Release | U.S. PIRG | Public Health

2016 Shows First Decline In Antibiotics Sales For Livestock, Following Numerous Commitments From Restaurants And Food Companies

Today, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released its annual report of antibiotics sales for livestock and poultry, showing the first decline in year-to-year sales since recording began. Overall, sales of medically important antibiotics to food animals decreased by 14 percent from 2015 through 2016.

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News Release | U.S. PIRG | Financial Reform

Statement On Departure Today of Consumer Bureau Director Richard Cordray

U.S. PIRG and the state PIRGs commend Rich Cordray for his over six years as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s first director. In its short years as the nation’s top consumer cop, all under Director Cordray, the young Bureau has returned $12 billion dollars to over 29 million consumer victims of financial schemes by wrongdoers ranging from Wall Street banks, mortgage companies and for-profit schools to debt collectors, credit bureaus and payday lenders. FULL STATEMENT FOLLOWS.

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News Release | U.S. PIRG | Financial Reform

Groups Demand To Know How Much Money Equifax Making Off Data Breach

Recent rosy earnings reports from Equifax and Transunion suggest that the company and its competitors are profiteering from consumer misery caused by the Equifax breach. They're hawking extremely-lucrative subscription credit monitoring products (up to $19.95/month or more) and charging us, in over 40 states where fees are allowed, for the privilege of placing a credit freeze to protect our own credit reports. Read our group press release, which links to our group letter to the Big 3 credit bureau CEOs.

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Report | U.S. PIRG | Safe Energy

Unacceptable Risk: Two Decades of “Close Calls,” Leaks and Other Problems at U.S. Nuclear Reactors

American nuclear power plants are not immune to the types of natural disasters, mechanical failures, human errors, and losses of critical electric power supplies that have characterized major nuclear accidents such as the one at Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan. Indeed, at several points over the last 20 years, American nuclear power plants have experienced “close calls” that could have led to damage to the reactor core and the subsequent release of large amounts of radiation.

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Report | U.S. Public Interest Research Group and National Taxpayers Union | Budget

Toward Common Ground: Bridging the Political Divide to Reduce Spending

The U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG) and National Taxpayers Union (NTU) have joined together to propose a list of 30 specific recommendations to reform our future spending commitments. If enacted in their entirety, these changes would save taxpayers over $600 billion in total by 2015, the target date for the Fiscal Commission to reduce our publicly-held debt-to- GDP ratio to a more sustainable level of 60 percent.

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Report | Consumer Protection, Health Care

The Young Person's Guide to Health Insurance

For people in their late teens and twenties, getting health insurance can be a lot like a lottery . . .

If you’re lucky, your parents have a good plan that covers you while you are in school or your employer picks up the tab. If you’re not, your options shrink to two: a plan offering good coverage that you can’t afford, or a plan you can afford that covers little to nothing.

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Report | Health Care

The Three Trillion Dollar Question: What Health Care Reform Can Save For Families, Businesses and Taxpayers

Without health care reform, the United States is projected to spend over $40 trillion on health care in the next decade.  Experts estimate that thirty percent of that spending – up to $12 trillion dollars – will be wasted on ineffective care, pointless red tape, and counterproductive treatments that can actually harm patients.  

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Report | U.S. PIRG | Consumer Protection, Transportation

Private Roads Public Costs: The Facts About Toll Road Privatization and How to Protect the Public

A growing number of states are considering arrangements in which a private operator provides an up-front payoff or builds a new road in return for decades of escalating toll receipts. The report assesses these deals and identifies a number of problems.

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Blog Post | Consumer Protection

Consumer Tips and FAQ about the Equifax Breach | Mike Litt

Hackers gained access to the personal data of over 145 million Americans in the Equifax breach. Here are some recommended actions consumers can take to protect themselves and answers to frequently asked questions.

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Blog Post | Public Health

During This Intense Hurricane Season: Some Reports and Information On Storms, Chemicals and Public Safety | Kara Cook-Schultz

Hurricane Harvey was a natural disaster, and a devastating one at that. During and after the hurricane, we learned anew that it’s not only the initial storm that threatens life and limb, but also chemical facilities that are hit.  As Irma bears down on Florida, we hope for the best outcome for the people of Florida. We also want the state to prepare for the worst. In that spirit, here are some resources and information on storms, chemicals and public safety.

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Blog Post | Financial Reform

U.S. House Considers Trojan Horse Bill To Weaken Credit Bureau Laws | Ed Mierzwinski

What would you do if you knew that the Big 3 credit bureaus were in the Top 5 of complaint leaders to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and that their mistake-ridden reports caused consumers to either be denied jobs or pay more for or be denied credit due to those mistakes? Well, if you were the leadership of the House Financial Services Committee, you'd consider not one, but two bills to make this worse by eliminating strong consumer protections and eliminating some and limiting other damages payable to consumers when credit bureaus wreck their lives. You'd hide a massive weakening of consumer protections inside a Trojan Horse bill that claims to be about letting the credit bureaus help people.

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Blog Post | Financial Reform

States, DC Stepping Up To Protect Student Loan Borrowers | Chris Lindstrom

With the U.S. Department of Education failing to protect students from unfair practices, the states and the District of Columbia have begun to enact student loan servicing protections. Here's an overview of what's happening in the "laboratories of democracy."

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Blog Post | Financial Reform

Federal Reserve Questions Administration, Congressional Rollbacks of Wall Street Reform That Threaten CFPB | Ed Mierzwinski

Recently released minutes of the July meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, comprised of Fed governors and regional Fed Bank presidents, show its concern that Wall Street reform rollbacks proposed by Congress, Treasury Department and the White House could allow "a reemergence of the types of risky practices that contributed to the crisis." Meanwhile, Fed vice-chair Stanley Fisher repeated his warnings that risks from the proposed rollbacks were "mind-boggling."

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    Help stop the overuse of antibiotics, be a watchdog for consumers, zero out dangerous toxics, protect kids from lead, get rid of more single use plastic and more.
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  • WATCH OUT FOR UNSAFE TOYS
    Our “Trouble in Toyland” report found boron in slime, choking hazards without the proper warning labels, “connected” toys that pose a privacy risk and more.
    GET THE FACTS
  • MCDONALD'S GOT AN "F" ON ANTIBIOTICS
    Our new report ranks America’s 25 largest burger chains on their policies relating to antibiotic use in their beef supply chains.
    SEE THE REPORT
  • HOW IS THIS EVEN POSSIBLE?
    One year after Equifax announced the worst data breach in history, a U.S. House committee has recommended weakening data breach laws. Tell Congress to protect Americans, not Equifax.
    TAKE ACTION

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