Debt reduction, credit card negotiation, and your…

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If you owe more than $10,000, there is no legal right to debt reduction or debt settlement. Any advertisement promoting loan and credit card deduction is misleading. I hear them all the time on TV and radio. I get spam ads on the Internet. You’ve heard the commercials:

• Do you know if you qualify for a personal bailout?
• If you have credit card debt of more than $10,000, you have the right to settle that debt with monthly payments for a fraction of the amount you owe.
• Billions of rupees have been given to credit card companies and they need to clean their accounts forever and this is good news for you.

Well, I’ve heard them too and I spent some time watching it. If I were liberal, I’d call the debt reduction claims misleading, but I’m not, I’d call them lies. Every single one of those statements is provably false. Congress passed the Credit Card Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009, or the Credit Card Act of 2009. Pay minimum? In my opinion this is a new requirement and a good idea. Took me a while to see the act. Nowhere is it stated that the consumer has the right to reduce the loan if it exceeds $10,000. It just isn’t there. I am not the only one calling them out. The Federal Trade Commission states on its website that:

There is also no guarantee that a creditor will accept part payment of a valid debt. In fact, if you stop making payments on a credit card, late fees and interest are usually added to the debt each month.

I have literally dozens of clients who hired me after trying one of these debt negotiators. The stories are all the same. They are told not to hire a lawyer, stop making their credit card payments and start paying the debt negotiator. When a credit card sues for nonpayment, the customer calls a debt negotiator who tells them that they are not lawyers and that the customer needs to hire one. What?! I thought he didn’t need a lawyer. These negotiators charge too much, do too little, hide facts and mislead the consumer. I really feel sorry for the clients who hired me after using a debt negotiator.

Most people are really trying to pay back creditors and are just looking for help. They trust the loan negotiator because they want to believe that this is a realistic option only to find out that they are being taken advantage of. It’s a shame because there is help for anyone in debt, not with these negotiators. We do not negotiate loans. We eliminate debt. I wouldn’t call a creditor and ask them if they would consider a payment plan or no interest for a while. We use the powerful bankruptcy laws to put you on equal footing with a creditor, no negotiation required.

To learn more about bankruptcy, please take a moment to visit my website: downriver bankruptcy,

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