I wish I would have looked in my favorite place on the web, right here on rip-offs, before I agreed to have someone take my case to settle my credit card debt. I figured that seeing the ad on a local tv comercial I could have a little bit of trust in this company. I didn't know the lawyer was from WV and that is probably how he got on in the first place.
Well like everyone else I had all my interest rates doubled, not because I ever had a late payment, or missed a payment ever it was "just cause they could", they blamed it on the economy, no one ever brought out that the banks made loans that they knew that would fail, not only that they took out insurance that if it did fail, they would collect not once from the insurance companies, but the government bail out. Bush did it right, not only did he make money off the oil prices that went sky rocket, but he gave AIG, the insurance company, and wallstreet $700,000,000,000 to get out of debt. Which he should have given everyone in america about $22,000 so they could get out of debt, and let wallstreet collapse.
I was looking for a business to settle my debts, not go bankrupt, I wanted to pay them as much as I could, not just say screw-you, thanks for the money like wallstreet did. I was told by consumer debt that I would have to pay them $350.00 for a lawyer, John Leaberry, to start a bank account for me so I could build up money in my account and they could make my creditors offers that I could save money. Well these people never had in their ads that I would be paying these people 25% of what I saved. I was told that after my first offer to Chase credit card was reportly was settled, Consumer debt said they would be sending me a check for $681.00 and that I was suppost to call a 'Ken' at a number, I would have thought that he worked for Chase but I was really wrong. I talked to one of his co-workers and told them my account# and routeing# and 3 check#'s, and they were going to be taken out of my account starting in Jan 2010, first it would be $681.00 and then $218 in February, and again in March, all together I would get out of our Chase account paying just $1117.
We didn't owe them much, I think that we might have owed them about alittle over 2,000., but as January went by, then Febrary came and it was almost time to take the second payment out of our account, there was no money comming out of our account, then when March came and went I cancelled the 3 check numbers I gave them, that cost another $31 to my bank. I received emails that Chase had someone trying to get into our online account and they closed it and we had to call them to see what happened. I called Elizabeth, my worker for the counsel, and she acted shocked, I wonder what she was so shocked about getting caught? Then she called me again and said they had an offer for another card of mine, they wanted their fee before it was paid though, I told her that was enough. They were going to settle for $692 and they wanted almost $509, but they said they would settle for $350, when I got to asking what all the fees were. She started telling me that each payment of $350 they took $49 out before it went into my account, she said that was for taking care of the collections agencies calls, I don't know how they were called because I got most of the calls, and the paper work. Well someone didn't do their job because some of the companies that called me after I told them to go to hell, say that they were never contacted by anyone. Then their fee, which was news to me, was a wopping 25% of what they saved me, but as Elizabeth told me that they were giving me a break, they named the fee that I paid, they didn't figure it up the way they did everyone else. As soon as I got away from these people it didn't take them long to tell every credit card company that I was on my own.
This ConsumerDebt left all of these credit card companies up in the air until I quit their business. I was told by a few of the card companies that they were never notified of what happened to me. As of April non of the checks that I told this co-worker of Ken ever came through my account. I wonder what they did. I know I got taken for the 4 months of the $49.00 and the $222.00 they said was their fee, and the first $350.00 that they said it was unreturnable, was never told that either. That adds up to almost a thousand dollars I got took.