Filing a complaint used to cost an afternoon. Software that drafts the paperwork has cut that cost to minutes, and public agencies are absorbing the difference.
Britain’s housing ombudsman offers one measuring stick. Complaints there stood at 2,600 in 2022, the year ChatGPT arrived. Last year the figure passed 7,000.
The pattern is not British. Consumer complaint volumes at the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau multiplied fivefold over the same window. Regulators in Germany report a comparable jump, as do courts handling petitions in Brazil.
Who is filing matters more than how many. A researcher told TechCrunch that the great majority of new cases come from people who were always entitled to claim and are only now getting around to it. Paperwork and language were the wall, not the merits.
The strain lands on intake staff. A queue built for a few thousand letters now carries several times that, and agencies are weighing automated triage against the risk of wrongly turning away valid claims.
Courts and customer service desks met this pressure earlier. What makes the new wave different is where it lands, on bodies with statutory deadlines and no option to close the door.
