Complaint Review: Credit Solutions - CSA

Credit Solutions, who also refer to themselves as CSA make a lot of claims about their ability to negotiate a debt settlement with various creditors. They promise monthly follow-up calls, that they will interact with creditors on your behalf, and a settlement of about 40% of the original dept. They also promise not to share personal information with the creditors. For this they charge 15% of the ORIGINAL debt amount to be settled but tell you that they will refund the full amount if you do not receive a satisfactory settlement through them.
I hired them to handle one American Express account which I was unable to make payments on due to an unexpected loss of income. In my case they did not do monthly follow-up calls, it would be generous to say they called me once every three months. They were unable to keep track of what collections agency was handling my account, so I had to do that on my own. They even gave my personal cell phone number to the creditor! The eventual settlement they reached was 60% of the original debt. I had to negotiate my own settlement with the creditor at 40%.


Since I did not take the settlement that CSA negotiated, I asked for a refund in accordance with their 100% satisfaction guarantee and was completely stonewalled. What I was eventually told was that since they did get a settlement offer for me, they were not obligated to give me any refund, even though the settlement was much higher than what they promised and they didn't provide the other services they had agreed to. Basically they took $1,800 from me and did nothing in return.

Justin
Lawrence, Kansas
U.S.A.