• What people are saying
• Rallies to save the CFPB
• PG&E Medical Baseline program supports customers with medical-related needs
• Coalition Efforts
• CFPB Watch
• Class Action Database: Mortgage servicer settles over disservice to borrowers
• About Consumer Action

What people are saying

"Today's financial literacy session was awesome!! I learned a wealth of knowledge that will allow me to increase my clients' financial situation!! Thank you all!! I have attended several of Consumer Action's webinars. The webinars were informative. Today was super fantastic!!! The energy was good!” —Chicago “Money Management 1-2-3” training participant Tanya Jackson, Northside Community Dev. Corp. (visit our website to learn about upcoming trainings and webinars)

Rallies to save the CFPB

“1,2,3,4, consumers are worth fighting for… Who are we? CFPB. What do we do? We fight for you!” The chants were loud and clear among the thousand or so advocates, staffers and supporters who came to rally outside of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) headquarters in Washington, D.C., last month. 

Supporters show up for the CFPB at February rally

Supporters were fired up over the abrupt dismantling of the consumer bureau by DOGE, the administration’s Department of Government Efficiency. Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Maxine Waters were among nearly 20 members of Congress who joined the crowd to rally in support of the embattled bureau. (The CFPB was the brainchild of Senator Warren.)

Participants in the Hands Off the CFPB protest—the second in three days—stood up for agency staffers, who were locked out of their offices and told to suspend all work on new financial rules, investigations, bank oversight, lawsuits, public communications and consumer complaints.

“Understand this—this fight is about more than one little agency. This fight is about hardworking people versus the billionaires who want to squeeze more and more and more money out of them,” said Senator Warren at the rally.

The unelected, unaccountable head of DOGE, billionaire Elon Musk, sent a team in to inspect sensitive CFPB data, some of which requires high-level government clearance to access. There is no evidence that the DOGE team had the necessary clearance. Musk appeared to be uninterested in procedure as he has directed teams to immobilize this and multiple other agencies. Musk tweeted on his platform X, “CFPB RIP.” Trump fired the highly effective bureau director, Rohit Chopra, days before the invasion of the CFPB began.

Consumer Action's Ruth Susswein (left) with National Consumer Law Center attorneys Alys Cohen (in red) and Lauren Saunders

Consumer Action’s director of consumer protection, Ruth Susswein, who joined both rallies, was incensed by Musk’s attack on the CFPB.

“This is the agency that has returned $21 billion to consumers who’ve been harmed by error-laden credit reports, expensive junk fees, fake bank accounts, and more. This is a small agency that takes its obligation to protect consumers very seriously and, ironically, has been a model of efficiency and responsibility, holding financial companies accountable for their bad acts,” said Susswein.

Musk has some serious conflicts of interest with the agency he intends to destroy. He’s created a payment app with Visa, called X Money, that the CPFB would oversee as the regulator of many types of financial institutions and services. But any CFPB monitoring of X Money and other payment apps—to ensure fairness to consumers—has now been blocked. Musk’s conflicts also include inappropriate access to competitor data when DOGE inspected CFPB records.

The CFPB was created as part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, a law that was established to protect consumers from financial abuse after the 2008 financial crisis, when taxpayers bailed out big banks and other financial predators. The crisis cost 7 million consumers their homes—lost to foreclosure because of predatory mortgage lending. The consumer watchdog’s mission is to prevent unfair terms, deceptive financial products, and abusive lending. 

In fact, only Congress has the authority to change the law and shut down the CFPB. Meanwhile Trump, Musk and other new Bureau leadership are intent on defunding, defanging and deleting the agency. The current acting director has already chosen to request zero funds for the agency to function.

Nevertheless, consumer advocates and some lawmakers will continue to fight to ensure that this watchdog will be able to achieve its mission.

PG&E Medical Baseline program supports customers with medical-related needs

By Monica Steinisch

Regular INSIDER readers know we’re highlighting a different Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) assistance program each month of 2025 as part of the consumer education grant we received from the company to increase awareness and enrollment. PG&E is California’s largest gas and electricity provider. This month, we’re highlighting the company’s Medical Baseline program. 

Medical Baseline—or Medical Baseline Allowance—offers two kinds of assistance for residential PG&E customers who depend on power for certain medical needs. Enrollees receive:

• An additional monthly allotment of energy—depending on the customer’s energy needs—at the lowest price available on their rate plan.  
• Additional call, text or email alerts—maybe even a door-bell ring—before a Public Safety Power Shutoff (sometimes necessary due to high winds or other severe weather).

Eligibility for the Medical Baseline Program is based on medical conditions or needs, not on income. To qualify, a full-time resident in your home must:

• Have a qualifying medical condition and/or
• Require use of a qualifying medical device to treat ongoing medical conditions.

There are a wide range of medical conditions and types of equipment that qualify for Medical Baseline. Only one application is required per household, regardless of how many residents are eligible.

To enroll, a qualified medical practitioner must certify you as having a permanent qualifying medical condition. Then, to remain eligible, you must self-certify every four years. This is to confirm you still live at the service address on record; it does not require a qualified medical practitioner's signature.

Learn more and enroll in the Medical Baseline Program here.

If you don’t qualify for Medical Baseline, but your health or safety, or that of someone in your household, would be at significant risk if your electric or gas service were disconnected, you can receive additional power shutoff notifications by self-certifying for Vulnerable Customer Status. This remains on your account for 90 days, and you can resubmit an application for a one-year extension after that.

Visit Consumer Action's “Save Money and Energy” project page for more information about the various assistance programs and links to the program applications.  

For readers outside of PG&E's service area, we recommend that you ask your utility company about assistance programs, or that you get in touch with your state’s utility regulator to learn about local energy assistance programs.

Reaching out to San Francisco’s Chinatown residents

An important component of our project is outreach to PG&E customers, with particular emphasis on reaching seniors, to make them aware of the various assistance programs they may be eligible for. As part of that effort, Consumer Action staff recently conducted two workshops in San Francisco’s Chinatown. 

Consumer Action outreach team member Jamie Woo shares information about PG&E assistance programs at the Chinatown Salvation Army

The mid-January event was held at the Chinatown Salvation Army for the organization’s Home League Group, whose members are seniors who meet regularly for prayer, devotion, exercise and bingo, among other activities. The Salvation Army’s Pastor Zhao, who leads the group, expressed appreciation not only for the information and materials Consumer Action provided, but for our being able to send an outreach team member, Jamie Woo, who could present to the 27 attendees in their native Cantonese. Attendees learned about the CARE/FERA, ESA, and Medical Baseline programs, had their questions answered, and left the workshop with the knowledge and materials needed to enroll in the appropriate programs (if they didn’t already do so during the event). 

Woo addresses a full house at the Chinatown branch of the Community Youth Center of San Francisco

The following month, on Valentine’s Day, Woo returned to the neighborhood—this time presenting at the Chinatown branch of the Community Youth Center of San Francisco (CYC) to a group of older area residents. With almost 50 attendees, the turnout was nearly double what was expected. Fortunately, Consumer Action outreach staff member Nelson Santiago was on hand to help out with questions about enrollment in the programs. Thanks to recommendations by our host at CYC, the Consumer Action team is currently exploring new potential educational partnerships with other organizations to reach seniors in neighboring communities.

Coalition Efforts

By Monica Steinisch

Consumer Action and its allies recently called on policymakers about these important issues:

DOGE’s unauthorized access and activities. More than a hundred organizations, including Consumer Action, signed on to a letter to Congressional leaders expressing grave concerns about Elon Musk and representatives of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) illegally interfering with and disrupting essential government operations; obtaining access to systems that contain the sensitive, private information of millions of Americans; and obtaining access to Treasury Department systems responsible for federal payments. The groups demanded that Congress immediately investigate Musk and DOGE activities to ensure that Americans’ personal information has not been compromised and that operating systems continue to function without disruption. They further demanded that Congress determine whether Musk or his DOGE team have violated the law by accessing protected or classified information without authorization or by ignoring the temporary restraining orders issued by multiple courts. Congressional action is needed to protect individuals’ rights, our democracy, and the rule of law. Read the letter here.

Repeal of CFPB’s overdraft fee rule. Consumer Action joined 200 other consumer, civil rights, labor, legal services, and community organizations and academics in a letter urging members of the House Financial Services Committee to oppose efforts to overturn the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s overdraft fee rule, which will reduce most overdraft fees from $35 to $5, stop manipulative practices by big banks, improve transparency, and put $5 billion back into the pockets of American households. The overdraft fee rule, which only applies to very large institutions with over $10 billion in assets, closes a loophole that has allowed big banks to trick people into paying excessive overdraft fees and earn billions in profits off of the most vulnerable families. Read the letter here.

Fair, transparent ticket pricing. A coalition of 15 consumer advocacy organizations wrote to the Senate Commerce Committee urging its members to support S. 281, the TICKET Act. The bill would fix a range of problems with live event ticketing by mandating price transparency through upfront, all-in pricing; banning speculative ticketing (a practice of resellers who offer tickets they haven’t purchased yet); prohibiting resellers from using language that misleads consumers into thinking they are affiliated with the artist, team or event venue; providing fans a full refund for a canceled event, or the option of a full refund or comparable replacement ticket if the event is postponed; and requiring the FTC to study challenges in enforcing the 2016-enacted BOTS Act, which outlawed the resale of tickets purchased using bot technology. Read the letter here.

CFPB Watch

By Ruth Susswein

Each issue of CFPB Watch has been filled with the latest actions the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has taken to protect consumers and hold companies accountable for financial fraud and other types of deceptive, illegal and predatory behavior.

Most unfortunately, this month we must report on the demolition of the agency by billionaire Elon Musk, Trump’s special advisor, who heads up the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and has declared his intentions to “delete” the consumer bureau.

Rallies have been held to express outrage by supporters, members of Congress and agency staff, whose lives have been upended by firings and work freezes. For more on this, see Rallies to save the CFPB, above.

All work at the Bureau was suspended in February; employees were sent home and told not to return. That means that staffers were no longer working on lawsuits against financial firms that were misleading consumers, no banks were being monitored, no new rules were taking effect, and no consumer complaints were being addressed. 

DOGE is not operating efficiently, as it slashes and burns down federal agencies without first evaluating where cuts could be effective. In fact, not a penny of taxpayer money will be saved from all the current and future cuts planned for the consumer bureau—not one penny, because CFPB funding comes from the Federal Reserve, which is financed by banks.

What this means is that, without this federal financial watchdog to defend us, real harm will come to real people. 

• Student loan borrowers who turn to the CFPB to assist with debt relief disputes will be disregarded. (The student loan ombudsman who fights those fights was recently fired as part of the purge.)
• Consumers who file complaints with the CFPB will not see their problems pursued.
• Refunds from settlements with companies that harmed consumers will be delayed or denied. 
• Investigations into new financial violations will be ignored.

The CFPB has returned $21 billion to consumers who’ve been harmed by unfair businesses. Some tell Consumer Action they rely on the CFPB:

“The CFPB has been a godsend for consumers. I understand why financial institutions don’t like it. The CFPB forces them to deal fairly with customers or pay a price when they don’t,” said Joel from Arkansas.

“I was completely blown away by how quickly they responded to my complaint and helped me get to a resolution,” said Lisandra from Tennessee. “The financial institution I was dealing with at the time made no effort to resolve the issue at a customer service level, and when escalated at the manager level, they claimed that they could not assist. I felt powerless. Within a week, I heard from an executive of my bank… I was able to get this all resolved just before the due date and my credit was not impacted. ALL BECAUSE OF THE CFPB. THANK YOU CFPB!”

The only action Russell Vought, the current acting CFPB director (and an architect of Project 2025), has taken since halting all Bureau work has been to side with a payday lender that charges 300% interest. Vought dismissed the Bureau’s lawsuit against SoLo Funds that charged the FinTech with advertising 0% APR and “no interest” loans but then tricking customers into paying tips on their payday loans (and making it nearly impossible to avoid tipping).

Vought is expected to dismiss another 38 cases that are currently pending against financial firms accused of predatory actions against consumers. He also has threatened to lay off 95% of CFPB staff and has cancelled the Bureau’s building contract and immediately stripped its headquarters of its name. 

Some consumer advocacy groups (with the support of 23 state attorneys general) have sued the government to stop the dismantling of the CFPB. As a result, a judge has temporarily halted any further firings, fund transfers, and data extraction or destruction—for now. March 3, they are back in court.

Legally, and technically, Congress is the only entity that can dissolve the CFPB. However, if all of these actions come to pass, there will be little left of the consumer bureau until another administration revives this critical agency.

Class Action Database: Mortgage servicer settles over disservice to borrowers 

By Monica Steinisch

Among recent settlements added to the Consumer Action Class Action Database is the $9 million Fandango agreed to pay to resolve allegations that the online movie ticketing platform failed to disclose convenience fees for ticket purchases, in violation of New York law. If you paid a convenience fee to purchase electronic tickets to any movie in any New York state movie theater through Fandango’s website, mobile app or any other Fandango platform between Aug. 29, 2022, and March 11, 2024, you may be eligible for payment. The deadline for claims is March 31, 2025.

Of note is the $5.8 million Nationstar Mortgage, which does business as Mr. Cooper, agreed to pay to settle allegations by attorneys general and mortgage regulators that the company violated numerous mortgage-servicing laws, resulting in some borrowers losing their homes and others being locked out of their homes. If your mortgage loan was transferred to Nationstar for servicing between Feb. 1, 2011, and Dec. 18, 2017, and became 30 days delinquent within 90 days of the service transfer, resulting in foreclosure; or, your property was subject to a Nationstar inspection, determined to be vacant, and the locks were changed between June 24, 2011, and Dec. 29, 2017, and you requested access to the property within 30 days of the initial lock change or the property was reported as occupied through a subsequent inspection within 90 days of the initial lock change, you may be eligible for payment. The deadline for claims is today (March 3). 

About Consumer Action

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Consumer Action is a nonprofit organization that has championed the rights of underrepresented consumers nationwide since 1971. Throughout its history, the organization has dedicated its resources to promoting financial and consumer literacy and advocating for consumer rights both in the media and before lawmakers to promote economic justice for all. With the resources and infrastructure to reach millions of consumers, Consumer Action is one of the most recognized, effective and trusted consumer organizations in the nation.

Consumer education. To empower consumers to assert their rights in the marketplace, Consumer Action provides a range of educational resources. The organization’s extensive library of free publications offers in-depth information on many topics related to personal money management, housing, insurance and privacy. At Consumer-Action.org, visitors have instant access to important consumer news, downloadable materials, an online “help desk,” the Take Action advocacy database, and more. Our in-language media outreach allows us to share scam alerts and other timely consumer news with a wide non-English-speaking audience.

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