Interservice Financial Solutions IFS Debt, Contego Law WILL RIP YOU OFF!!! Confessions from Debt Settlement Salesperson Frederick, Maryland
If you dont have time to read the whole thing you can skip
to the BOTTOM LINE: at the end.
DISCLAIMER: I would like to be upfront in disclosing that I used to work for IFS Debt (Interservice Financial Solutions Inc. aka Contego Law) You can take that as you like, if you think I am just some disgruntled employee (like Im sure their current sales reps will probably try to spin for you) that is fine by me. My only goal in this posting is to make sure people fully understand what they are getting into with this company.
Make no mistake, this is a for profit debt settlement company. If you are not familiar with debt settlement, I highly suggest you do some simple research and you will be able to easily find the many pitfalls in falling for one of these companies that prey on your vunerabilities. In reading just a few articles you will begin to understand why 12 states have decided to outlaw debt settlement programs.http://www.smartmoney.com/spending/deals/debt-settlement-could-cost-more-than-you-think-21442/
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SavingandDebt/ManageDebt/DebtSettlementACostlyEscape.aspx
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/microsites/moneymatters/dealing-with-debt-relief-services.shtml
I first keyed into problems with IFS Debt (Interservice Financial Solutions aka Contego Law) after working there for about a month and experiencing the reclusive way in which they conducted business. At that point I started to develop questions that I feel any employee should understand such as how the process actually worked, who some mysterious people working within the company were, how long our company had been in existence, and why we didnt have a web site.
I daily asked my manager for answers and watched as he would danced around my questions until he could change the subject, ultimately never giving me any straight answers. I finally got fed up and sent an email to corporate (not my manager), with which I received NO RESPONSE. The following week I was reprimanded by my boss and told that I needed to keep my mouth shut regarding questions about the company and that if a customer ever asked I should just use the law firms information and avoid using our companys name. This should have been a huge red flag to get out immediately, but this was during the initial economic melt down and I had no place else to go.After this incident I decided to dig deeper and started to look into the addresses that were on our clients paperwork and discovered that one belonged to a hair-dressers office in Newport Beach and had never been an attorneys office like the papers stated. Shortly after having brought this to my managers attention, we received a memo from our corporate office that we were now to use a different address. RED FLAG
As I began to dig deeper I decided to google the name of the CEO of IFS Debt Mr. Brian Maller. If you give it a shot on your own youll be surprised to discover the top hit being documents from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/cases/ameridebt/motion-to-show-cause-Pukke-Contempt.pdf
Paraphrasing his involvement, Brian Maller was directly involved in hiding money for the CEO of Ameridebt, which was shut down by the FTC for wrongful practices. This is one of the reasons why the people who got ripped off by that company could not get their money back for years. RED FLAGOver time I began to get phone calls from clients who had signed up for debt settlement programs through IFS Debt, but with a separate law firms. Upon further investigation, IFS Debt worked with two separate law firms prior to Contego Law; one being Allegro Law firm, and the other Campos Chartered Law Firm.
http://www.lbfmiami.com/pdfs/hess_102808A.pdf BOTTOM LINE:
Do not do sign up with anything having to do with IFS Debt
(Interservice Financial Solutions inc.)
They have a horrible track record, about 70% of the people I saw sign up
either through my co-workers or myself, canceled out of the program and received no refund for the fees which add up into the thousands. They
are being run by questionable people at best and based on my mediocre
investigative skills, I would assume Im simply scratching the surface.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Doublej11
Irvine,California,
USA
I Agree, Netdebt.com and Contego Law Will Rip You Off
#2UPDATE EX-employee responds
Thu, December 24, 2009
I used to work for Netdebt.com (aka Contego Law) and they have got to be the worst Debt Settlement Company on the planet. They only care about making money and as a sales person we were tought to get get the sale no mater what. They don't care about helping you or your situation one bit. They just want to line their pockets with as much money as they can. The owner of NetDebt.com was a former loan officer and this was set up to be his cash cow. They also own MMLN or The Mortage Modification Legal Network which is just as bad. I know from personal experiance because I recomened that my parents use them because they got hit hard with the down turn of the economy and MMLN made the program out to be the best thing since sliced bread. Well, its not and they RIPPED OFF my parents...the parents of one of there employees non the less. I left the company because management was horrible! They couldn't run a lemonade stand let alone a Debt Relief company. Another reason was that I just didnt have the heart to sell people who needed the most help a program that would leave them in a worse situation that they were in when they started...it's just not right! Now Debt Settlement is not nesisarily a bad debt relief option just so long as you know what your are getting into and that it is the best option for your situation. That's another problem with them...how can you honestly have the consumers best inerested in mind when you only offer the debt settlement option? Some people don't need a program that agressive and would be much better off in a debt management program. I can garuntee you that as soon as they get wind of this their marketing slave will add a rebutal to this in an attempt to justify why NetDebt.com is wonderful. Don't buy into it because his job is to post fake reviews online to boost the companies image and have negitive posts removed or justified. He even had me log into Yahoo Answers and report a negitive staement about the company as a violation of the terms of Yahoo Answers, reason he needed my assistance is that anything posted there that get 2 or more reports as being a violation is removed by Yahoo. Point being is that this company is all smoke and mirrors! Their elaborate website and fake reviews are all just to get you to sign up and make your first payment. I'm not disgruntled I just think its wrong that they can get away with this stuff...have a heart, there people need help more that you need your Mercedes!