Answered Research · Original data analysis
CFPB debt collection complaints: what 13 years of federal data show
Published 2026-07-06 · By John DiSalle · Data: CFPB Consumer Complaint Database public API, retrieved 2026-07-06 · Download the datasets (CSV)
Key findings
- • Consumers filed 283,207 debt collection complaints in 2025 — the most ever recorded in the CFPB’s public database, more than 4× the 68,107 filed in 2023. The first half of 2026 has already logged 170,322. Thirteen-year total: 966,061.
- • The single most common issue, every year since 2017, is “attempts to collect debt not owed” — 115,683 complaints in 2025, 40.8% of the year’s total.
- • Four debt-buyer families — Resurgent/LVNV, Encore/Midland, Portfolio Recovery Associates, and the entity that answers for Jefferson Capital — drew 55,251 complaints in 2025, about 19.5% of all debt collection complaints, alongside the three credit bureaus at the top of the list.
- • Companies respond on time (97.1% in 2025), but only 0.16% of 2025 complaints ended with monetary relief (446 of 283,207). About 25.6% ended with non-monetary relief, such as correcting a credit report or closing an account.
- • Adjusted for population, Georgia leads the nation (212.6 complaints per 100k residents in 2025), followed by Texas (168.4) — which also filed the most complaints outright (52,707).
What this data is — and is not
These are consumer-submitted complaints, not adjudicated findings. A complaint is an allegation; being named in one — or in thousands — does not establish that a company broke any law. Large companies with millions of accounts naturally draw more complaints than small ones. The CFPB’s own disclaimer: “This database is not a statistical sample of consumers’ experiences in the marketplace and these complaints are not necessarily representative of all consumers’ experiences with a financial product or company.” The Bureau also notes that complaint narratives “are not verified before publication.” We publish this analysis because the database is still the largest public record of what consumers say is happening to them in debt collection — read it with those limits in mind.
Debt collection complaints per year
Complaints published in the CFPB Consumer Complaint Database with product “Debt collection,” by calendar year received.
What’s behind the 2024–2025 surge
Complaint volume roughly doubled in 2024 and nearly doubled again in 2025. Part of the surge is consumers filing debt collection complaints against the three national credit bureaus — typically disputes about collection accounts on credit reports. Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian together account for 70,641 of 2025’s complaints (24.9%), up from 6,382 in 2023. But the surge is broader than that: excluding the three bureaus entirely, 2025 still saw 212,566 complaints — about 3.4× the bureau-excluded 2023 count of 61,725.
An honest caution: complaint counts measure submission behavior, not necessarily collection activity. Filing is free, takes minutes, and complaints are not verified before publication. In the samples we pulled while building this study, some complaint narratives were near-identical form letters citing the same statute — a pattern consistent with template or credit-repair-style filings. The CFPB does not publish an official attribution for the surge, and neither do we.
The companies named most often (2025)
The CFPB attributes each complaint to the company that responds in its portal — so complaints about familiar collection brands often appear under a parent or servicing entity.
| Company (as listed by CFPB) | 2025 complaints | Who that is |
|---|---|---|
| Equifax, Inc. | 26,438 | Credit bureau — collection-account disputes on credit reports |
| TransUnion Intermediate Holdings, Inc. | 24,424 | Credit bureau |
| Experian Information Solutions Inc. | 19,779 | Credit bureau |
| Resurgent Capital Services L.P. | 17,554 | Servicer for debt buyer LVNV Funding — profile |
| Encore Capital Group Inc. | 13,486 | Parent of Midland Credit Management and Midland Funding — profile |
| Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC | 12,353 | Debt buyer (PRA Group) — profile |
| CL Holdings LLC | 11,858 | Responds for debt buyer Jefferson Capital Systems* |
| CCS Financial Services, Inc. | 6,450 | Collection agency |
| National Credit Systems, Inc. | 4,398 | Collection agency (rental debt) |
| Kriya Capital, LLC | 4,195 | Collection network |
| I.C. System, Inc. | 4,092 | Collection agency |
| Transworld Systems Inc | 4,028 | Collection agency |
*In a sample of CL Holdings LLC complaint narratives we pulled from the database, consumers repeatedly name Jefferson Capital Systems as the collector; no separate “Jefferson Capital” company appears in the database’s debt collection records. Per-year counts for every company above, 2013–2025, are in the companies CSV.
Reminder: a high complaint count is a function of portfolio size as much as conduct — these are the largest debt buyers in the country. Regulatory history for each company (which is a separate question from complaint volume) is covered on its Answered profile, linked above. If one of these companies is suing you, see our state guides — for example Midland in Texas, Portfolio Recovery in Georgia, and LVNV Funding in Florida.
What consumers complain about
| Issue (CFPB category) | 2025 complaints | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Attempts to collect debt not owed | 115,683 | 40.8% |
| Written notification about debt | 64,048 | 22.6% |
| Took or threatened to take negative or legal action | 48,580 | 17.2% |
| False statements or representation | 38,462 | 13.6% |
| Communication tactics | 9,519 | 3.4% |
| Electronic communications | 4,312 | 1.5% |
| Threatened to contact someone or share information improperly | 2,603 | 0.9% |
The top two categories — debt not owed, and problems with the written notice — are both, at bottom, documentation problems: consumers saying the collector can’t or won’t show the debt is theirs, correct, and collectible. Those are the same proof questions that decide debt-buyer lawsuits. Issue-by-year counts for 2018–2025 are in the issues CSV.
What happens after you complain
Companies almost always respond on time — 97.1% of 2025 complaints got a timely response. But “response” usually means an explanation, not relief: 73.3% of 2025 complaints closed with explanation only. Non-monetary relief (often deleting or correcting a tradeline, or closing the account) came in 25.6% of cases. Monetary relief is rare in every year of the data: 446 complaints in 2025 (0.16%), and 5,251 across all thirteen years (0.54%).
| Company (2025) | Complaints | Closed with explanation | Non-monetary relief | Monetary relief |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Resurgent Capital Services L.P. | 17,554 | 12,119 (69.0%) | 5,435 (31.0%) | 0 |
| Encore Capital Group Inc. | 13,486 | 7,339 (54.4%) | 6,144 (45.6%) | 3 |
| Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC | 12,353 | 6,898 (55.8%) | 5,455 (44.2%) | 0 |
| CL Holdings LLC | 11,858 | 11,858 (100.0%) | 0 (0.0%) | 0 |
| Cavalry Investments, LLC | 813 | 636 (78.2%) | 177 (21.8%) | 0 |
Response categories are the CFPB’s. Rows don’t always sum to the total: a small number of complaints are untimely or still in progress. Full data in the company responses CSV. Note the spread: Encore resolved 45.6% of its 2025 complaints with non-monetary relief, while CL Holdings closed 100% of its 11,858 with an explanation and zero relief of either kind.
The practical takeaway: a CFPB complaint can get a collection tradeline corrected, but it is not a defense to a lawsuit. If you’ve been sued, the complaint portal won’t stop a default judgment — only filing an answer does that.
Where complaint rates run highest
2025 complaints per 100,000 residents, computed against the Census Bureau’s July 1, 2024 state population estimates (the latest available).
| State | 2025 complaints | Per 100k residents |
|---|---|---|
| Georgia | 23,770 | 212.6 |
| Texas | 52,707 | 168.4 |
| Louisiana | 6,639 | 144.4 |
| Florida | 31,702 | 135.6 |
| South Carolina | 6,608 | 120.6 |
| Delaware | 1,234 | 117.3 |
| Nevada | 3,513 | 107.5 |
| Alabama | 5,536 | 107.3 |
| Mississippi | 2,925 | 99.4 |
| North Carolina | 10,836 | 98.1 |
Top 10 of 51 (states plus D.C.). All states, with 2024 counts and populations, in the states CSV. Sued in one of these states? Start with our state guides for Georgia, Texas, Florida, and North Carolina.
Methodology, limitations & sources
All complaint figures were retrieved on 2026-07-06 from the CFPB Consumer Complaint Database public search API (consumerfinance.gov/data-research/consumer-complaints/search/api/v1/), one aggregation query per calendar year with product=Debt collection and date_received_min/maxset to January 1 – December 31 (we verified the date bounds are inclusive). Company, issue, state, timeliness, and company-response counts come from the API’s own aggregations, which cover every complaint in the filter (no sampling). State per-capita rates divide 2025 complaint counts by the Census Bureau’s July 1, 2024 population estimates (NST-EST2024). Population data: census.gov NST-EST2024-ALLDATA.csv.
Known limits of this data: the public database contains only complaints the CFPB sent to companies for response — complaints routed to other regulators or to companies outside the CFPB’s portal are not published, so these counts understate total complaint volume (the CFPB’s annual FDCPA reports count more). Complaints are attributed to the responding entity, so subsidiary brands roll up to parents (Midland to Encore; LVNV to Resurgent; Jefferson Capital to CL Holdings). The “Debt collection” product category begins July 2013, so 2013 is a half year, and the CFPB revised its issue taxonomy during 2017 (both label sets appear in that year’s data), so issue trends are only comparable from 2018 on. Counts reflect the database as of the retrieval date; recent months can still grow slightly as companies respond. And again: complaints are unverified consumer allegations, not findings of wrongdoing.
- CFPB Consumer Complaint Database (official)
- Example API query — 2025 debt collection aggregations (reproduces our 2025 row)
- Census Bureau — state population estimates, 2020–2024 vintage
Datasets licensed CC BY 4.0 — journalists and researchers may reuse them with attribution to Answered (answeredlaw.com). CSVs: cfpb-debt-collection-complaints-by-year-2013-2025.csv · cfpb-debt-collection-complaints-companies-2013-2025.csv · cfpb-debt-collection-complaints-issues-2018-2025.csv · cfpb-debt-collection-complaints-states-2024-2025.csv · cfpb-debt-collection-company-responses-2025.csv. Questions or the underlying pull scripts: support@ellasid.com.
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Answered is self-help software, not a law firm. This analysis is general information about a public federal database, not legal advice. Companies are identified exactly as the CFPB lists them; inclusion reflects complaint volume only and is not an allegation of unlawful conduct by Answered.