The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has released a report following its investigation into complaints about credit card reward programs. The report highlights how reward program complaints were largely focused on those who could not redeem the promotions they thought they earned.

Yahoo Finance Senior Personal Finance Writer Kendall Little breaks down the CFPB's report and provides tips for consumers to avoid any issues with these reward programs.

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This post was written by Melanie Riehl

Video Transcript

Now Back in March, the the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said that it would begin looking into credit card reward programmes, and that was after a surge in complaints.

So what are some of the most common complaints here?

Yeah, so in May.

Actually, the CFP B then released a report that went into detail on those complaints.

And so generally the credit card rewards complaints were focused around people who could not use the rewards that they had earned.

For some people, that meant that maybe they actually didn't qualify or weren't eligible for a bonus that they thought they would be.

Or maybe their, UM, rewards programme devalued those rewards before they could use them.

Other people saw things like account issues and tech problems, keeping their rewards in a limbo.

And then there were also people who had their account closed or closed their account and just completely lost access to their rewards before they could use them.

We gotta get to some tips for consumers to avoid having these issues in the first place, too.

Yeah, so I think the number one most important thing is probably the most boring thing is reading your terms and conditions.

Specifically, you wanna look for rewards, programme terms.

That's where you're going to find all the info about how you can make sure you qualify for a bonus.

What purchases actually count for your rewards?

It's all the fine print that you don't want to read, but it's really, really important information to have.

And then secondly, you should use your rewards.

Don't just let them sit in your account forever stockpiling them.

That's how you lose the value of them.

So if you have a cash back card, maybe at regular intervals throughout the year, you're cashing it that in if you earn points or miles, maybe you set a goal for a vacation, and then you're using those rewards and accruing them toward that specific goal.

What you don't want to do is just let them sit and never use them so they get devalued or you lose access