|
|
Review 9/21/2007
|
I was referred to this company by NuStart Debt Management and they were to provide debt settlement services for me. The arrangement was made to have $388 per month withdrawn from my bank account and placed into a trust account. Art Matthews was to contact all of my creditors (around 17 in all) and negotiate settlements with them. From the start I was skeptical, but had no choice as I was between a rock and a hard place and was desperately seeking to avoid bankruptcy. Being in the situation I am in, money is very tight and even $388/month was very difficult to manage.
The promises:
1)All of my creditors would be notified within the first few weeks of my first payment and their calls would stop or almost stop within 30-45 days.
2)Within the first 2 months one or two of my smaller debts would be settled.
3)I would receive a welcome phone call with 48 hours of my first payment.
4) I would have a direct way to communicate with the law firm.
The Reality:
1)I have no idea if my creditors were notified. The calls never stopped even almost 60 days into the program and none of the creditors acknowledged receiving any notice.
2)I was told only after I signed the contract that only the larger debts would be focussed on first as they were most likely to take legal action. That's not what I was told... it would take years to accumulate enought to settle those, meanwhile the smaller ones would grow stagnant, increase in interest and damage my credit even more.
3)Never did get the welcome call. 3 weeks after I signed up and after a complaint to NuStart I got a call and was told they tried calling twice. Once, my 15 yr old answered and the second time there was no answering machine (I have 1 machine and a digital answering service by the way - redundancy).
4)It was never easy to get a hold of these people. I had to either complain or leave messages and when I got a call back the excuse was always that they were extrmely busy. I also spoke to a young lady who was to ask Mr. Matthews something for me and would call me back in two days. A week later and no call. I then left another message about an attorney who was calling me to collect a debt and I needed to speak to someone. No return call after 3 days. I had to complain again to get a call back.
Needless to say, I withdrew from the program today only to be told I would not get any money back (over $700 was paid to date). Mr. Matthews cited that $388 went to NuStart for processing fees and the remainder would be kept as fees earned. I understand that the contract stated that he is entitled to 8% of my total debt as a retainer and then a percentage of the amount of each settled debt. Here is my problem. It bothers me that he has no trouble sleeping knowing that that $700+ could have helped me out much more than he helped me out and that he really did almost no work for that money. If nothing else, I learned a valuable lesson. I can do everything he promised to do on my own. Anyone can. There is no need for a service such as the one he half-heartedly offers. Yesterday, I settled an $870 debt for $300. It would have been nice if he had done that. Then my $700 would have went to something usefull, instead of going to his "Mercedes" payment. In closing, these guys will not go to bat for you or even represent you if you do get sued (it even says that in the contract). Also, all your debts will be ignored for at least 6 months to a year before they will start to negotiate and the calls will not stop. Do the settlement negotiations yourself. Almost all your creditors will be happy to work with you as I have found out. Save yourself a lot of money (literally thousands) and a lot of heartache.
Please keep in mind. I don't belive that every customer has had a bad experience with them. I just know that from the start, I had nothing but problems and now I'm out over $700 when I could have had 2 or 3 of my debts settled by now. Now almost all of my accounts are charged off because I was told to stop paying all of my debts 3 months ago. I'm in worse shape now than when I started. Word of advice... Talk to all of you creditors first before deciding to use a service like this. You'll be surprised how accomodating they will be. After all, they do want their money and they'll be willing to work deals with you rather than take you to court or sell it off to a collection company for pennies on the dollar. Good luck!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|