Complaint Review: American Finasco - Conroe Texas

How do you know who to believe?  If they have a rip off report against them they must be bad.  I especially dont like the comment The fee to American Finasco was picked up immediately after the settlements were made so they can be assured of receiving their fees.  It sounds like all of these companies are the same; they just care about lining their own pockets.  

The facts (as we see them): 1. American Finasco was hired by Bell Graphics and Joe Bellavia on June 5, 2002 to assist his company in restructuring debt in the approximate amount of $15,000.00 representing three different creditors. 2. As Mr. Bellavia stated, he set up a monthly budget amount of $2,000.00 to handle the projected payments to creditors and to pay our fees. 3. On or about June 26, 2002 American Finasco settled one of his accounts, CIT Equipment Leasing for 3 payments of $2,812.00 each. Mr. Bellavia was contacted before we completed this settlement because the payments to the creditor exceeded our monthly budget. Mr. Bellavia advised us to go ahead and complete the settlement. 4. From June 29 through September 5 Mr. Bellavia assigned American Finasco an additional 10 creditors for additional $16,000.00 of debt. As these accounts were assigned, Mr. Bellavia did not increase his monthly budget as we would normally require. Unfortunately, I cannot find evidence that American Finasco followed up to get him to increase the budget. 5. During the month of July, 2002 American Finasco settled six more accounts. Many of these settlements were approved from our initial work since it was difficult to retract offers we had already made. 6. On September 26, 2002 Mr. Bellavia wrote to my sales agent, Chuck Yerbic advising he was not happy with our service and that we were instructed to discontinue all efforts on his accounts. 7. When the September letter came to me, I immediately called Mr. Bellavia to try to solve any problem and keep him as a client. At that time, he informed me that he had hired another Debt Management Company to assist him and explained why he was unhappy with our service. 8. I informed Mr. Bellavia that I would be more than happy to re-work some of our settlements so we could reduce the monthly demands on his cash flow. He advised us that he could not have us do that because he had hired another firm and that would be a conflict of interest. 9. With his refusal to let us continue I advised Mr. Bellavia that I would refund his $500.00 retainer in full, even though company policy is to keep the retainer if we are pulled off a project. (A copy of my letter is attached) 10. Mr. Bellavia that wrote to me on October 2 asking that American Finasco refund $4,362.79 to help him be able to meet the creditor payments. There are three major problems with his request: American Finasco never assumes any financial responsibility for making creditor payments and this in effect would be doing that. It is strictly our client's responsibility to keep up with the creditor payments. This would also be refunding fees that were earned in full as per our contract with Mr. Bellavia. He made his request after firing us. In effect, he is asking us to help fund the activity now being handled by a competitor. Action our company has taken: As documented above, American Finasco did everything we could to save the relationship-short of loaning his company money. I spent a great deal of time talking with Mr. Bellavia from September 26 October 8 to search for a solution. My solution was to refund his retainer, which by policy we did no have to do. Unfortunately, Mr. Bellavia had already closed all reasonable avenues for American Finasco to pursue to solve his creditor problems.