Debt settlement companies often charge high fees and offer no guarantees.
Debt settlement companies often offer services for a fee that you can do yourself, such as getting you into a loan rehabilitation program.
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Credit: To begin negotiations with lenders,
debt settlement companies often encourage you to stop paying your bills altogether so they go to collections.
Non-payment consequences:
Debt settlement companies often encourage you to stop making payments to your creditors to persuade them to negotiate.
Not exact matches
«
Debt relief or
settlement companies often claim that they can work with your creditors to reduce the amount of money you owe, but that doesn't necessarily mean your loan will settle,» said Dudum.
And secondly the cost of hiring a bankruptcy attorney is
often substantially less than the amount you would have to pay to the
debt settlement company.
The bottom line on many
debt settlement companies is that fees are high and
often, or effectively, non-refundable.
Debtors can negotiate with creditors without the help of a
debt settlement company, and
often find great success in doing so.
Prior to the
debt relief laws that now prohibit upfront payments for many
debt settlement companies, debtors would
often pay into a
debt settlement program for months and never see any progress.
With
debt settlement,
often your account balances can be reduced by 50 %, not counting
company fees.
The cost for these services are
often a fraction of what you would typically pay a
debt settlement company to do it for you.
This not only gives them an advantage in working out
settlement arrangements, but it
often makes it possible for the
debt settlement company to reasonably predict how certain creditors will respond to a
settlement offer, as well as what can and can not be worked out.
The
debt settlement company also takes a chunk —
often a very large chunk — of the escrow.
I met with debtors every day that have paid a lot of money to
debt settlement companies and have received no service, and by the time I meet with them it is
often to late to negotiate a
settlement.
A
debt settlement for less than the full balance owed gives a
debt collection
company the opportunity to collect a lump sum payment in one big payment, and creditors
often don't turn down a lump sum chunk of cash!
It is
often at this point that complaining consumers decide to cancel their agreement with the
debt settlement company, only to be told that the significant fees they paid are non-refundable.
Although
debt settlement companies market their services by touting their past successes,
often their claims are unsubstantiated.
Debt settlement / negotiation
companies often promise you that they can cut your bills in half or more.
Often the
company actually handling your
debt settlement has no idea what promises have been made to you — nor any obligation to meet them.
Debt settlement companies know that you are vulnerable at this point, so they
often take advantage of the consumer.
Unfortunately, more
often than not, these informal
debt settlement companies fail, hurting the consumer both emotionally and financially.
«
Debt settlement providers often encourage consumers to stop paying creditors, or consumers stop on their own because they simply can not afford simultaneously to make monthly payments to their creditors, set aside funds for settlements, and pay fees to the debt settlement comp
Debt settlement providers
often encourage consumers to stop paying creditors, or consumers stop on their own because they simply can not afford simultaneously to make monthly payments to their creditors, set aside funds for
settlements, and pay fees to the
debt settlement comp
debt settlement company.