A core component of the FCC’s Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau’s mission is to empower consumers in the telecommunications marketplace. True empowerment requires that consumers be active participants in the Commission’s processes. That is why, in January 2015, the FCC launched the Consumer Help Center. Through the Help Center, the FCC not only modernized and revitalized the consumer complaint intake process, these improvements also introduced new resources for educating consumers and sharing complaint data. Since the Help Center’s launch, we have made concerted efforts to continue to improve the quality of visitors’ experience, increase transparency around the complaint data we collect, and develop new ways to engage consumers.
Today, we are proud to announce our latest enhancements to the Consumer Help Center. We have added a “Tell Your Story” feature that gives consumers a new way to share with us their concerns and observations about a provider, a policy, or an issue affecting them or their communities generally. The redesigned Help Center webpage also provides easier access to all of the FCC’s consumer guides as well as the latest updates to consumer-related information on FCC.gov.
When you “Tell Your Story,” your comments will not be formally served on your provider as is our practice with complaints about service and billing. Instead, they will be used by Commission staff to inform policy making and identify practices that may be ripe for potential enforcement action. This differentiation will better allow the agency to focus its complaint resolution resources on those types of issues while maintaining and enhancing consumers’ ability to give voice to other concerns and thoughts.
Whether you are confused, frustrated, or feel you’ve been harmed, we want to hear from you. With the insights we gain, we can identify trends and ensure that we remain aware of the issues and concerns that matter most to consumers across the country. We will continue to take your consumer complaints and serve them on your provider. The complaint data we collect – dating back to the Help Center’s debut nearly two years ago – is shared publicly in the Consumer Complaint Data Center. This new functionality will also help add another layer of granularity to our data by differentiating between what might be called complaints vs. comments. As promised, we continue to make forward progress in our efforts to be as user-friendly, accessible, and transparent to consumers as possible.
We are committed to the rights of consumers. Empowering consumers to share their stories with the Commission better enables us to fulfill that commitment: to protect and inform you, the individual consumer. We also remain committed to providing you with excellent service and will continue to monitor and streamline our processes to meet your needs.
We welcome your feedback and comments about the updated Consumer Help Center. Please email us at webfeedback@fcc.gov.