Complaint Review: Family Credit Counseling Corporation

My sister and her husband tried to use this company to manage their debt. The main debt held was with American Express. Family Credit Counseling Corporation (FCCC) agreed to handle this debt and entered into contract with them. In the contract FCCC stated that:

"You are no longer required to answer calls from those companies. If you receive ANY calls, please advise them to contact us..." (referring to the original creditors)

and

"Once the creditors have accepted the proposals, you will be informed. If a proposal is not accepted for some reason we will work with you to work out any problems we might have with a creditor."

This is where the deal turned sour. American Express did NOT accept the contract with FCCC and my sister was not informed of this. Instead, FCC proceeded withdraw the money for the payments from my sister's account and make late, insufficient payments on the American Express card balance. The situation worsened when my sister realized that American Express was charging late payment fees and increasing the APR on the account.

As stated in the contract, my sister proceeded to contact FCCC about the isssues they noticed with their American Express cards. FCCC assured them that there was no issue and that the would work everything from their end. This continued for over four months before my sister finally cut FCCC from making withdrawals and worked issues out with American Express.

To this day, FCCC refuses to repay the cost of doing business with them. The also refuse to pay for the late fees they cause to be incurred on the American Express account. Not only have they denied responsibility, but have gone so far as to insinuate that my sister was supposed to somehow know that they did not do deals with American Express.

Daniel
Davie, Florida
U.S.A.