I was contacted by NES about a month ago with urgent phone messages that said I needed to respond to a pending legal matter. Upon calling them they proceeded to tell me that everything was set up to take me to court over this bill. They said that everything was in line and they had contacted my county and verified my employment. I agreed to work toward obtaining cash to begin paying off my debt. They made it sound like my window of opportunity was the last day of October. This was the time frame allowed for me to pay off the settlement amount of $3260 instead of the entire amount of $5360. I was to keep in touch with them and inform them of my progress. I called faithfully about every other day and agreed to make an initial $500 payment set up for Fri Oct 17th. I set this up over the phone. I set this payment up with this company with good intentions to establish rapport and trust with them and to hopefully be able to continue with an honest payment plan should I not have any success in obtaining the full amount of cash via a loan, etc. I felt I trusted them. However, they did tell me that payments were no longer allowed on my account; that they needed the full amount whether it was the settlement amount made by Oct 31 or the full amount after that date. I figured though that if I began making good sized payments that they would eventually accept that. They did have me scared though, thinking that this might not work and they might mean it if I couldn't pay in full. I wanted to avoid court at any cost. So I began working diligently on cash possibilities. They told me to keep in touch with them on my progress. I called about every other day. Each day when I called them I was told by a lady named Verena that working on obtaining cash and the pending $500 would delay the legal proceedings toward me until the end of the month. I have been pursuing other cash sources with no luck so far but have been determined and felt that I had a back up plan with getting the cash from my father-in-law as a last resort. HOWEVER, on Friday (yesterday) when I called to tell them that the funds were available to deposit my check, which they had asked me to do, they changed their tune. They gave me some lame story about how the other company (I'm not sure who they mean by this... I guess Capitol Resurgent Services who apparently had my Sears account prior to them) that my $500 payment was no longer good enough and that they'd sue if I didn't come up with the full amount within a half hour! I remained very polite and called the man sir and spoke nicely to him saying that I didn't think that was fair after they had reassured me that this initial payment would tie me over until the end of the month and supposedly until I obtained the rest of the settlement amount. (This man claimed to be president of the company and Verena had handed me over to him.) There was some discussion and I was being cooperative but he flat out hung up on me right in the middle of the conversation! I was stunned! At this time I began to realize that something did not smell right about this company and I began to have doubts about the whole thing. Tonight I have been doing research on this company and I have discovered that they are a very unscrupulous company that will start deducting unauthorized payments from accounts without the account holder's knowledge or deduct more than you tell them to, and use unscrupulous tactics etc. I had every intention of working with them because I am in a better financial situation than I was when I allowed this account to get out of hand. However, they just lost their chance when they treated me so poorly and unprofessionally and after I read so many bad things about them. I have emailed my bank requesting a stop payment on this check as it hasn't been processed yet. I am awaiting your response on how to proceed next. I don't want to skip out of paying a bill but I feel they must be realistic. I also have doubts because at different times when I spoke to them it seemed they were giving me different amounts for the settlement and for the total amount of my bill. When I think back about a lot of things, some things just didn't seem right. I certainly don’t want money being deducted from my account that would not even get applied to my debt if they are some shady outfit! I am also fearful that since my check hasn't already been deposited, that they meant what they said yesterday and they are skipping my $500 payment and just suing me right away for the whole amount. I realize I've given a lot of info here, but hopefully this helps you to help me. I appreciate it very much! Thank you very much!
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