You are of course correct. Most of these so called debt help companies are helping alright. The only problem is, they are simply helping themselves to what little money the consumer has left before pushing them over a financial cliff.

As much as I hate to by cynical, years of experience has taught me, that when it comes to financial assistance, a consumer should just assume whatever is being sold to them is not in their best interests unless it is proven otherwise. Stick with that advice and a consumers has a much more fighting chance out there.

Thanks again for the comment
Damon Day recently posted..Preferred Financial Services Makes Dumb Move by Publishing Dumb List (dofollow)

Thanks for coming on to share your thoughts. I think you might have missed the point in my article. Jane was living on an investment account which at her current rate of draw would be depleted in 12 months or less.

The sales person at Legacy Debt Solutions seemed to be more concerned with stealing her from Credit Solutions (a program she signed up with a few weeks before) that he didn’t even ask her where her money came from or if she had a job. Sure they did a budget and like magic all of the numbers worked on paper. The problem was, they put her on a 4 year plan and she would be completely broke in less than a year. Not to mention you should never enroll in a 4 year settlement program unless you are looking forward to litigation.

My point was that debt settlement sales people typically don’t have the education or the experience to actually help consumers other than to sell their debt settlement service. They are not paid to tell clients what their best options are, they are paid to sell their program to whoever calls in looking for help.

Further Legacy is a Front Loaded fee model program. Ask the sales person at Legacy what will happen on October 27th, 2010. The scary part is that most of these programs will be out of business within a year because of that new FTC law.

Unless they are publicly traded you have no idea if they will be able to stay in business without collecting all of their money upfront as most of them do now. So before you enroll into any debt settlement program that collects most of their money before performing your settlements, think about what would happen if you paid their fees for a year and then one day they closed their doors.

Most of these guys have a huge push right now to get as many clients in the door as they can before the October deadline, because the law is not retro active.
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I can certainly help point you in the right direction once I have a full understanding of your financial situation and goals. This of course is biased advice, but I would recommend you schedule a consultation with me and I can review your circumstances and let you know exactly what you need to do to achieve the results you are looking for.
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