CREDITSOLUTIONS anyone use company

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-06-2006
CREDITSOLUTIONS anyone use company
4
Mon, 11-16-2009 - 6:52pm
I am wondering if any of you have gone this route and if so is it legit? And the Pro's and Con's of doing so. Thanks

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iVillage Member
Registered: 07-05-2006
Mon, 11-16-2009 - 7:13pm

I actually used Credit Solutions to settle some of my debt. I could tell you a story 5 pages long, but I just don't have time to type it all. I have positive and negative things to say. The first thing you should know is that your credit will be decimated. They told me this in the beginning but then said that since we owned a home, our mortgage payments would offset the negative affects of not paying our credit cards, but what we failed to foresee is that we would get sued by a credit card company. Credit Solutions is not responsible for you being sued and there's really nothing they can do about it. At the time I thought "Well, my credit is pretty bad anyway" but it wasn't nearly as bad as it is now. We have a ton of stuff on our credit report that is inaccurate as well. It's just a mess. I ended up paying over a thousand dollars to this company only to take most of my accounts out of the program once I realized that they weren't really doing anything for me if I could be sued by a credit card without their knowledge that it even happened. I did settle one card with them, but for all the hassle, it wasn't worth it. What I eventually learned is that everything they did for me, I could have done myself and I had to pay them to do...well, nothing! I settled 2 credit cards on my own. My advice would be to get yourself a good book that explains all the ins and outs of the credit card industry and getting out of debt. You can do this yourself.

Friends of mine had good luck with the Consumer Credit Counsel of America. They consolidated their debt and had great success. Much easier than my nightmare of a process. And I believe that the program they did was free! Feel free to ask me any questions. The most basic rule is that if they are charging you money to do something, then they don't really have your best interest at heart. If you really want to go through a service like this, find a charity organization that will help you. I wish I would have researched more, but I was so afraid and in such an incredibly hard place at the time. I just wanted my life back!

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-06-2006
Tue, 11-17-2009 - 2:53pm
Do you mind me what credit card company you ended up setteling with?

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iVillage Member
Registered: 07-05-2006
Tue, 11-17-2009 - 8:08pm

I had 4 credit cards. 3 of them I put into the Credit Solutions program. Out of the 3 of those cards in the program, one ended up sueing me and winning because I had no idea what I was doing. I then took that card out of the program and another one that had about a 7,000 dollar balance. I had to deal with the creditors lawyers and pay them huge amounts of money every month (I'm talking a couple thousand a month for 3 months until I had them payed off). Ridiculous! I ended up settling the other credit card myself, working with the lawyers to come up with an amount that was acceptable to them, giving them my tax return and paying them about $800 a month. Extremely difficult. I settled another card on my own with my tax return and my last and final credit card that I had kept in the credit solutions program I payed off finally with another tax return 3 years after putting it in their program.

My advice to you would be to go here.
http://www.cccsstl.org
It's the Consumer Credit Counseling Service
They will be able to go over your budget, your bills, your lifestyle and come up with a reasonable plan to deal with your debt. They are a non-profit.

Go here as well http://www.dcu.org/streetwise/april2002.html

This website talks about all of your options when you are searching for debt counseling services.

Basically, here is my advice. Search long and hard before agreeing to go into a service like this, whether that be a consolidation or a settlement company. It seems like the easy way out but it actually may be harder in the long run. To answer your question, I did use Credit Solutions to settle one card. It originally had a $5000 dollar balance on it and I think I settled it for around $2500, but what they fail to tell you is that debt settlement looks almost as bad as a bankruptcy on your credit and that you will have to pay taxes on the debt that is 'forgiven'. If I could do it all over again, I wouldn't have gone that route. This board has a tremendous amount of advice and support. They have a lot of knowledge about the best ways to manage debt. A lot of people follow Dave Ramsey's plan for being financially free. Maybe you could get his book from the library. Good luck!!!

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-06-2006
Wed, 11-18-2009 - 12:59pm
Thanks Abbie, for you great adivice. I am not sure what we will do in the end but we will not be using a debt settlement company. I would love to be able to just pay off my debt, but at the moment I am unemployed and we are living paycheck to paycheck from hubbys income. I am hoping to have a new job by January. Thanks again.

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