The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) on Thursday filed a lawsuit against Citizens Bank, alleging it routinely failed to investigate and resolve billing errors and unauthorized credit card charges reported by customers, The Hill reported. In a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for Rhode Island, the CFPB accused Citizens Bank of violating a slew of federal consumer protection laws between 2010 and 2016. The bureau claims Citizens Bank automatically rejected certain claims without due process, failed to compensate customers who were charged fees on erroneous or unauthorized transactions, and neglected to update some customers on the status of their complaints. The CFPB also accused Citizens Bank of failing to offer credit counseling referrals to customers who called a designated phone line for that purpose. Instead, the bureau alleges, the phone number directed customers in good standing to the general customer service line, while customers with delinquent accounts were directed to the collections department. Citizens Bank called the CFPB’s actions “misguided,” asserting that the bank fully compensated the “very small” number of affected customers soon after the bank reported these issues to the bureau in 2015. Citizens Bank said that it “self-identified operational errors” that affected roughly 2 percent, or 25,000, of its roughly 1.2 million credit card customers. The bank said it reported that conduct to the CFPB and paid $750,000 to a broad subset of potentially affected customers, calling the CFPB’s demands “far out of line.”
