When I joined RMP it was still called Jubilee American Financial, on 3/6. That name disappeared quickly.
I had no idea that anything was wrong until I tried to call them at the end of February 06. When the machine said no one was there to take my call, I got suspicious and did a websearch. That's when I found the first complaints, on just one website and the frightening news of the legal action taken against them in AZ.
So I dug out all my papers, started a diary of events, past and present and in the process, found an email from Tekkain telling me about the move to TX. He gave me the phone number but no address. That I got from the internet complaints. But when I called the new number and left a message about finding the complaints, I got a call back at the time I requested. Unfortunately, between the time I called and the time they returned it, I had come down with the flu, a sinus infection and felt like death. So I made another telephone appointment with the gentleman who called. This happened twice more, but as I was still sick the last time I talked to him (Brian, I believe it was), I said I would call back when I felt better.
Up to the point above, my story isn't too different from other's, except that I did get my calls returned, my emails answered and one of 5 accounts settled. Since I'm disabled with a chronic pain condition and since RMP had seemed to take care of every creditor I sent them word of, I was rather at a loss as to what to believe. I'd checked the BBB before I signed with them in 2002 and found nothing. When I checked the BBB on 2/28/06 and could only find one site that listed anything, and at that time, it only said an envelope sent to them had been returned unopened.
I had requested, around the end of Feb, to skip two months payments, since I'd finally found a car I could afford. That was the reason for the phone call, to make sure the request had gone through.
Being on SSD and under the poverty line, seeing that $200/mo go out the last 4 years every month has been extremely hard: even now, that's more than 1/4 of what I get a month to live on. But on the other hand, the company had seemed to be doing what they were supposed to, mostly, though it did seem funny that they hadn't been able to settle more than one account. And when you have a chronic pain condition, doing anything not absolutely necessary is a constant struggle. However, I was slowly checking out the steps to take when you are ripped off while praying that once I knew the right questions to ask, I'd find they had the right answers and could prove them.
Then this month I got a letter from another collection agency and my two months of non-payment were over as well. There went another $200, and I still didn't know what all my legal options were, such as, how long do you have to try to contact the company before you give up. Why were other people not getting calls back at a time when I was and what did that mean? And most important, if I had my credit union stop the payments, when I had no proof of my own that the company WAS ripping me off, would that invalidate the contract and cause me to lose $7200?
So I tried calling them again, last Friday and today, and got a message both times that all circuits were busy, please try later. So back to the internet, to check out the sites with complaints and back to the BBBonline as well. What I found was now 3 sites listing complaints and for the first time, in one of the Dallas BBB, a listing of 49 complaints against the company. Most of them were NOT resolved.
So tomorrow morning I will try calling them again, and if again I get an all-circuits-busy-message, I will email them this report, get the paper for the credit union signed and notarized and on its way and then see what response I get from them. That won't be the only action I take, but I will update this with what I learn as this goes on. If I get a reply from the company and proof they are legal, I'll post that. If not, then I guess I'm in the same boat as everyone else, except that since I can no longer work, there is no way at all I can come up with any money to pay off anyone until I receive back the refund. And from the complaints I've seen and the report on the BBB, that doesn't look promising.
If there is anyone else in NC who is a client of this company and has found out any info, I'd appreciate it if they would post it to this in the rebuttal section. It's very hard for me to stay on the computer for too long a time right now, so any help would be appreciated. That $7200 is just a little under what I get to live on for a year, and the anxiety over this is making my disability worse, which means less time I can spend working on this, yet I have no choice, it appears, if I ever want to move or get out of debt.
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