AI;dr

Years ago Experian hit me with a sneaky fee for some credit-monitoring service I’d apparently been auto-enrolled in after checking my score. It was a substantial amount of money at the time. When I complained & asked for a refund for this auto-enroll service, Experian immediately offered me a discounted rate.

I filed a complaint with the CFPB. I have no idea what happened behind the scenes, but Experian backed down and refunded every penny.

I’m not an expert in financial regulation but that was the first time in a while where I felt like a federal agency was actually protecting ordinary people rather than hassling them.

Over past couple years the CFPB’s leadership seems packed with hyperpartisan apparatchiks intent on dismantling the very agency they’re in theory going to run.

This debanking matter may well fall within the CFPB’s purview. But the agency today seeing today bears little resemblance to the muscular consumer watchdog it was created to be.

Acting Director Mark Paoletta strikes me as precisely the kind of Washington operator lawyer you’d want nowhere near an agency whose entire purpose is to protect consumers from powerful financial institutions.