This company also does business under or in association with Consumer Law Associates, LLC out of Texas. These apparently are their negotiators that they will tell you all about in their sales pitch. The representative will boast of how great and wonderful their company is because they have only had 2 complaints in 7 years, but look up this company above which actually does most of the work in attorney states, that is where the complaints are.
How the program works, You are instructed to stop paying your creditors and within 180 days or so, the creditors will send you to an outside collection agency and/or sue you. During this time, they are taking money from your account and putting it into a non-interest bearing escrow account. They take 74% of your money for their fees and you are only left with a small amount after each month to work for you within the program. Once you have accumulated enough money in the account, which may be over a year, they will start to negotiate with your creditors for a reduced settlement amount. Problem is, during this time, you have to deal with all of the phone calls, harassing letters, people showing up on your doorsteps giving you summons, destroying your credit further than it already has become. If they are unable to negotiate a settlement, you are left with the debt which has been magnified with late fees, interest, collection fees, etc. You are worst off then when you started.
A bit about my experience.
When you contact this company, they will go through a nice presentation on their web site with you which on the surface sounds wonderful and makes logical sense until you start to peel away the covers. Here are only a few of the representations that they will tell you.
1. They will tell you that if they are unable to settle any of your dept, they offer a $25,00 guarantee if you stick with the program which can be as long as 38 months. What they do not tell you is that the contract you sign absolves them of all guarantees and actually clearly states that you understand that everything that you were told during the sales pitch is the opinion of their representatives only and they are not bound by anything said or promised.in all other regulated financial industries this is illegal and all representations made by an agent must be documented and become binding and in most part must be part of the contract.
2. They will tell you that they have attorneys working for you and that you may be sued 4% of the time, if you are sued, you are instructed to send them the information and they will take care of it. This is false, they will take care of it for a fee which starts at $65 for a phone consult and possibly a letter to the creditor. If more is needed, they will then charge you for standard attorney fees which you have no idea what these fees are and how much. They also are very clear that they do not and will not represent you in court.
3. They claim that your credit will only be affected temporarily. Although the damage will not be as severe as bankruptcy you have no control of how the creditors will list the settlement. If the creditor shows it as a charge off and/or settled less than owed, you will have a difficult time obtaining future credit and/or other services like car/home insurance. Also, since they do not offer credit repair services, they will not go back and make sure that the companies have lived up to their part of the agreement and remove negative items from the credit history. You will need to hire another company to do this.
4. You are told that you can withdraw at any time during the program and any money will be refunded to you. This is only partially true. What they will keep is the set-up fee and all of the money they have collected as part of their "fee" which could be as high as 10% of your total debt. On top of this, they will charge you a termination fee as high as $199. What you may get back is money that is in your escrow account which as you recall is only a fraction of what you put in each month, but it could take months to get it back.
Before using this company and or any other debt company, please do your homework. Ask them for a written Guarantee, ask them for copies of all contracts you will be asked to sign. If they are unwilling to give this to you. Move on.
0 comments