Brazil: Financial sector receives most complaints from consumers

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The portal consumidor.gov.br received 513,283 complaints in the first four months of 2022. The complaints rose 10% compared to the same period in 2021 and are mainly directed at the financial sector.

Banks, financial institutions, and card companies received 137,666 complaints from January to April. It is almost 27% of all complaints registered at consumidor.gov.br in the first four months of this year.

Cards and consigned credit are the biggest targets of consumers. The problems with credit cards, debit cards, and store cards alone yielded 47,961 registrations and consigned credit, 26,789.

The Brazilian Association of Credit Card Companies and Services (Abecs) said that this volume of complaints reflects the increased use of cards and the government complaint portal. According to the association, “the platform registers only one complaint for more than 230,000 card transactions.”

“The analysis of data related to complaints also needs to consider that the use of cards and digital payments by Brazilians has been growing at rates above 30%, having registered more than 30 billion transactions in 2021 alone-equivalent to more than 85 million payments per day,” Abecs said.

The Brazilian Federation of Banks (Febraban) said it implemented self-regulation of consigned credit in 2020 to curb “bad practices” in offering the product. Since then, 875 correspondent banks have been warned or had their activities suspended.

AIR TRANSPORT GROWS

Complaints against the airline industry rose 83% in the first four months of 2022, compared to the same period in 2021. With this, air transport moved from 5th to 3rd place in the ranking of economic segments with the highest number of complaints on consumidor.gov.br.

The portal recorded 54,937 complaints against the airline industry in the first four months of this year. About 25% are related to difficulty or delay in returning values and reimbursement. Another 10% are about flight cancellations.

With the high number of complaints, the National Consumer Secretariat (Senacon) asked Procons to verify the complaints against airlines. In addition, the secretariat recommended that these companies improve communication with the consumer and inform them about regulatory changes.

AirHelp said the increase in complaints reflects the upturn in the industry and the effects of omicron. The covid-19 variant caused a spate of cancellations earlier this year, just as many passengers were taking advantage of the vacations and the relaxation of covid-19 prevention measures to fly again.

PORTAL

The consumidor.gov.br is a portal of the National Consumer Secretariat that allows the dialogue between consumers and companies to solve consumer conflicts over the Internet. The portal seeks to mediate disputes before the consumer turns to the Procons and the Courts.

Today, the average solution rate is 77%, and the average response time is seven days. Senacon said that consumidor.gov.br is “efficient in solving problems between companies and consumers”. Besides, it provides information that contributes to the actions of market monitoring and defense of consumer interests.

With information from Poder360