What if your mortgage or credit card blows up on you?

If a toaster you bought explodes in your face, you have recourse because the law says that toasters have to be safe. But until recently, if your mortgage or credit card "blew up" on you financially, there was no place to turn. That changed when the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau opened for business three years ago. The new sheriff in town has been putting mortgage rules and other safeguards into effect, and returning to the purchasing public $4.6 billion it was cheated out of by financial firms.

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But perhaps less well-known is how the agency has been helping consumers one-on-one. Its complaint database, in place from the start, has collected grievances from more than 400,000 consumers so far, according to Richard Cordray, the bureau's director. When you enter a complaint into the database, you get a tracking number and the agency investigates your claim, contacting the business in question, if necessary, to help get your problem solved.

In July the CFPB announced a proposal to expand the database so that people could add narrative descriptions of their complaints, making it a better investigative tool for all consumers to use.

"Including narratives will further enrich the information available in the database," Cordray said, "so that consumers and others are better able to spot trends and problems, and see problems that may not have been uncovered before." Access the database here.