At last check (including June activity), the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said the agency has handled approximately 930,700 total complaints across all products since opening its complaint database in June 2012.

While only a small fraction of that complaint figure stems from auto finance issues, the CFPB announced through a post in the Federal Register a plan to incorporate a short survey into the complaint closing process.

The CFPB explained in its Federal Register notice that consumers will have the option to provide feedback on the company’s response to and handling of their complaint via all channels including online, phone, fax, and mail. Officials noted the results of this feedback will be shared with the company that responded to the complaint to inform its complaint handling. The feedback will also be used to inform CFPB’s work to supervise companies, enforce federal consumer financial laws, write better rules and regulations and monitor the market for consumer financial products and services.

Consistent with the bureau's policy statement on disclosure of consumer complaint data, the CFPB said it will evaluate the data collected from consumer feedback before publication on the consumer complaint database. The bureau is anticipating publication of consumer feedback to highlight positive company behavior, provide consumers with timely and understandable information about consumer financial products and services, and improve the functioning, transparency, and efficiency of markets for such products and services.

Only those feedback narratives for which opt-in consumer consent is obtained, and to which robust personal information scrubbing standard and methodology is applied, will be eligible for publication, according to the CFPB.

The bureau went on to mention this information collection process reflects comments received in response to the notice and request for information (RFI) the regulator issued on March 24 of last year. The CFPB was seeking input from the public on the potential collection and sharing of information about consumers’ positive interactions with financial service providers including providing more information about a company’s complaint handling such as highlighting the quality of responses to consumers by replacing the consumer “dispute” function with a two-part consumer feedback process.

The CFPB reiterated the consumer will have the ability to rate the company's response to and handling of his or her complaint on a one to five scale and provide a narrative description in support of the rating.

Positive feedback about the company’s handling of the consumer’s complaint would be reflected by both high satisfaction scores and by the narrative in support of the score.

Negative feedback about the company's handling of the consumer's complaint would be better supported and more useful to companies than the current “dispute” function.

The bureau added the company response survey will replace the “dispute” option and allow consumers to offer both positive and negative feedback on their complaint experience.

More details from latest CFPB complaint database update

As previously mentioned, the CFPB reported that its database grew to approximately 930,700 complaints nationally as of July 1. Bureau officials mentioned four highlights in their latest update, including:

—Complaint volume: For June, the financial product or service most complained about was debt collection. Of the 24,500 complaints handled in June, officials said 7,032 were about debt collection. The second most-complained-about consumer product was credit reporting, which accounted for 5,001 complaints. The third most-complained-about financial product or service was mortgages, accounting for 4,323 complaints.

—Product trends: In a year-to-year comparison examining the three month time period of April to June, the CFPB noticed student loan complaints showed the greatest increase — 62 percent — of any product or service. The bureau received 652 student loan complaints between April and June of last year, while it received 1,057 complaints during the same time period this year.

—State information: North Dakota, Alaska, and Wyoming experienced the greatest year-to-year complaint volume increases from the April to June versus the same time period 12 months earlier; with North Dakota up 40 percent, Alaska up 31 percent, and Wyoming up 30 percent.

—Most-complained-about companies: The top three companies that received the most complaints from February through April of this year were credit reporting companies Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.