Complaint Review: Financial Management Assistance

I received a advertisement in the mail from Financial Management Assistance. Please note that the initial letter from them had no makings on it what so ever indicating their name. It simply said “Making Home Affordable, 12 U.S. Code, Ch, 28”. Some basic mortgage loan reduction, tax, principle/interest break downs reductions.  Also there was a code or key on the letter that supposedly is from the US Government program.

I actually received seven of these letters with similar info but all with different toll free phone numbers on them. I called a number of them but Financial Management Assistance was the only one that picked the phone up.

The girl I spoke to initially was Jenny. I told her I wanted to find out how the program worked. My first question was very direct and clear. I asked here “do you charge a fee for your services”? Here answer was “no we do not charge any fees”, the program is through the government.

Everyone needs to get paid and I have no problem with that-we all have to eat and have a roof. I simply wanted to know if they charged a fee and if they did how much it would be? Again I was told there would be no fee to me.

I told her I wanted to do a little research and would get back to her. She then put on a supervisor. I told her the same thing. I checker around and could find nothing negative on the net about this company so I decided to give them a go about a week later or so.

I called back and was placed with a man named Jim Miller who would be my contact and “Housing Counselor”. I emailed him/them all of the personal financial information they asked for from my wife and myself.

About a week later they had a man named Alex I believe (underwriter) call me. He explained the break down and surprise surprise, it was nothing like their letter example of mortgage payment reduction, not even close. I told him it really wasn’t much better than what I already had if better at all. He then told me it would be a $2995. Processing fee if I wanted to move forward.

I immediately told him that I was told there would be no fee on my end. He was apologetic but not sincere. I have a feeling this is what they do on a consistent basis with the hook being if they can save, or claim to save the client a good chunk of money they then get the client to pony up the up-front fee. In my case the $2995. amounted to approximately 1 ½% of the loan amount.

I am writing this report with the hopes that it will help other consumers. This company’s representative out right lied to me. I brought this fact up to Jim Miller my main contact for this company and he also lied to me and tried to cover over this fact.

I am especially concerned because I sent them a lot of very personal financial information based on a lie. I also verbally told them a lot of personal financial information over the phone.

Please beware of Financial Management Assistance. No matter what they tell you up front they are a for profit company charging very high fees to do some processing work with no guarantee you will get anything in return.