REFORMING AN INDUSTRY

After 10/27/10, virtually all of the companies offering to settle debt for a fee, will have to charge those fees based on a contingency. In other words, you pay for the service contingent upon who you hire, having successfully negotiated a reduced pay off amount with your creditors that you then accept and fund. Makes a ton of sense right? Yes indeed!

People will, however, still need to approach the idea of hiring someone to settle debts with caution.

Where We Were

Debt negotiation companies have, for the most part, been able to charge upfront fees. Often, the fees have been spread out over 6 to 18 months or more. This practice has long been recognized by some of us in the industry as one of the leading causes for consumers to “fail and bail” from their settlement program.

• The reason for the fail; money that could have been aggressively saved up to fund the earliest settlement offer went to the service providers fees instead.
• The reason for the bail; creditors and their assignees continue down a relatively predictable path to collect on unpaid accounts which can eventually lead to filing a court action to force you to pay.

Being sued does not necessarily mean the death of your debt settlement plan, but you need resources to address the lawsuit before it becomes a judgment. Without the money needed to address the issue, it will often mean the end of the road. Having paid upfront fees to a company who put their profit ahead of your success means you have limited, or no, resources to maneuver through the different stages of collection.

Where We Are

You may have, or currently do, recognize a debt settlement plan to be a realistic approach for you to avoid bankruptcy. Having enrolled (or thinking of enrolling) in a plan with a company whose fees were/are/still paid prior to successful negotiations is equivalent to gambling. You bet you can get through the settlements before getting sued. The company you hired bets they can get you to pay them all their fees before you bail.

Many companies who sell or perform debt settlement today will find that, without the ability to charge the high upfront fees, they will not be able to keep the marketing machine going. They will leave the industry. In their wake, we will hear from many more consumers who were sold the hope of avoiding bankruptcy by sales people whose only motivation was to meet a quota, keep their telemarketing chair and get paid. For more than a year, the media and internet has been ablaze with stories of people being taken in by the promises of many players in the debt relief industry. They are a statistic of the “fail and bail”. The statistics will get worse as several companies close their doors and leave their customers in a lurch, having paid in advance for a service that now will not be completed. At least, not by the people who were already paid for it.

Where We’re Headed

Do I sound a bit jaded? That’s because I am. So much so, that I can see where we are potentially headed in this industry.

Beginning in September, I think we will start to see some similarities with new and existing companies offering debt settlement  based on the now required (in most cases) contingency fee structure. Two of the similarities will be:

1. The new sales approach; “You need to come up with money as quick as possible to settle with your creditors”. – This is a good thing! It has been missing from the message of the majority of people selling debt settlement for a decade.
2. Many of the companies offering success fee debt settlement will charge between 25%-30% of savings where possible (some states have limits or caps on fees –Illinois is capped at 15%). – This is a bad thing!

When comparing 50% of your account balance as an average settlement, 30% of savings is roughly the same as charging the 15% of debt enrolled that has been the average in the industry to date. Fees could actually be higher than before with debts settled early in the program and for less than 50%.

We will still see high “fail and bail” statistics because companies will settle a debt and collect their contingency fee first, before moving onto the next settlement. There really is no problem with that per say. They did a job and should get paid for it. It is the correct model to have. Always has been. The problem is if the fee is too high, it still takes just as long to settle the debts as it did prior to the FTC banning upfront fees for a settlement service.

Where We End Up

I estimate it will take a year for the industry to settle in to the new business and operational realities created by the new FTC rules. Some companies are going to try to adapt, only to quickly find it no longer worth their while. Some will find that they should have been doing business this way all along, and will thrive. The amount of companies around a year from now will be far fewer than we have today. Within 12 to 18 months, the industry will have completed the all too necessary cleansing of those who came to it in order to make a quick buck.

BOTTOM LINE:

If you are a suitable candidate for debt settlement, which is someone who otherwise would have to file bankruptcy, look for companies with the lowest contingency fees. Even better, look for a company that: Offers low fees and other flexibilities that will lead to your success!

Debt Settlement is a very real option for consumers who are trying to avoid bankruptcy. Unfortunately, the decision to try it is too often made from an emotional perspective. This has, is, and will forever be; The WRONG perspective to use in your decision making.

Unsure, Scared, Overwhelmed?

Those promoting debt settlement for high paid commissions have been able to capitalize on the emotional appeal of avoiding bankruptcy, even when the math would clearly show settlement to be an unwise choice in your particular circumstance. It will be increasingly difficult for those selling debt relief services to do this after 9/27/10.

Knowing What to Expect

One of the more dynamic requirements found in the recently announced FTC rules that will govern the for profit debt relief industry, is the requirement for Good Faith Estimates. There are several estimates that will be required, such as:

• Total fee for service
• When an offer to creditors will be made
• How much money a consumer must set aside before an offer will be made
• How long it may take to achieve represented savings results and thereby complete your settlement program

These estimates, combined with; savings claims having to be backed up by the ACTUAL experience of the service provider (more on how HUGE this is in future posts), account balance increases, estimate of the service providers fees and a few other whammy’s – make for fantastic features for consumers evaluating a debt settlement service!

These fact-based estimates of total savings, fees and program lengths must be provided along with key disclosures PRIOR to consent to pay. In other words, before you sign up for a service. Now you get to see the numbers! Your decision to attempt settlement should always be factored on a very clear understanding of:

—> How much it will cost and how long it will take <—

When all costs are considered, it may not be worth it. If a program would take too long due to your limited resources, you expose yourself to increased risks of creditors using the courts in order to collect.

CRN, for years now, has broken this down in detail during our initial consult with you prior to even suggesting working with us. We do not take a file if we cannot settle one or more accounts within 180 days of membership, nor do we accept a person into a program unless we can see clearly prior to enrollment that you can complete your work with us in 18 months or less (except in rare circumstances).

The required compliance with these new FTC rules will show consumers considering settlement that the program length of 36 months (even longer) hyped by the industry are so problematic, they should avoid debt settlement all together.

The poor image that debt settlement gets is due to the massive enrollment of people who were not suitable to try it from the outset. Companies and sales people have inappropriately signed up the wrong people in order to make huge commissions.

WARNING:

• Get any company you are thinking of hiring after 9/27/10 to put estimates in writing prior to hiring them. If they are unwilling to do so, I would suggest finding someone who will.
• Companies whose front-end sales people lack sufficient negotiation experience (pretty much all sales people) will likely have to use blanket percentages and timing estimates that may not accurately reflect the reality of your situation. This may cause you to conclude settlement is not a good option.
• Companies whose fees are set too high may cause you to conclude settlement is not a good option. Look for credible companies with low fees.

CRN has no sales staff. All initial consults are performed by our specialists who work with our members and their creditors daily. This means the numbers we share with you are based on real time data – as it pertains to you – at that moment.

CRN has, all things considered, the lowest fees in the industry.

Schedule a consultation online or call 800-939-8357 in order to get the facts, numbers, and accurate estimates and see if settlement can work for you! Have a question? Get answers on line, go to: ASK CRN

CRN Supports Changes to the Telemarketing Rule Just Announced by the FTC

Yesterday, the FTC announced important changes to the Telemarketing Sales Rule, http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2010/07/tsr.shtm. The changes are intended to protect consumers with too much credit card debt from abusive debt settlement practices. One of the most important changes is that settlement firms will no longer be able to charge consumers up-front fees to settle their debts as of 10/27/10.

Overall, I am thrilled that the FTC is reigning in abusive debt settlement firms. For too long, these firms have been allowed to prey on consumers with too much credit card debt. Sadly, in far too many instances, consumers who worked with such firms saw their financial situations grow worse, not better, because of the large up-front fees they had to pay, and many of those consumers eventually ended up in bankruptcy.

The rules will shape the industry and promote the best practices moving forward.

I am concerned that some settlement firms may charge a large fee at the back end of their work for consumers. I have always contended that the fee amount charged by a debt settlement service provider directly correlates to how long it will take an individual to be successful in settling all of their debts. Program duration is directly attributable to increased risk of aggressive collection efforts such as filing lawsuits against a consumer in order to collect.

When consumers are looking into debt settlement as one of the few legitimate options available to deal with crushing debt, it is IMPERATIVE that they still weigh the COST for the service.

I will be posting more detailed comments about the amendments soon. Stay tuned!

We launched our newly redesigned Consumer Recovery Network website and this brand-spankin-new Debt Bytes blog this week! We have plenty of tweaks to make still, but things are shaping up.

I was editing the FAQ page today over at CRN (long overdue) and needed a break. I called a friend of mine who is quite knowledgeable and active with all things consumer debt and asked him for suggested additions (I hope to get him over to debtbytes for some guest posts in the future).

He emailed a brief list. I may later put some of these up on the CRN FAQ, but for now I needed another break from updating the new CRN site. Writing and editing site content knowing it is more focused on corporate image and branding can be a bit tedious. The debt bytes blog is where we at CRN can let our hair down a little (those of us that have much).

Anyway, here is the list of additional questions he sent me and my responses below each:

• Do I have to sign an agreement to use your services?

• Can I see it without giving up personal information?

All CRN members must complete and submit a Membership Enrollment Form prior to purchasing even our basic educational materials. Why? There is some pretty powerful stuff in there about getting out of debt, improving your attitude about money, planning for your financial future etc… Not everyone is ready for this stuff! There is just a little bit too much “truthiness” to it all. Someone could get hurt!

You can definitely see the agreement prior to speaking with us by downloading it from our web site: Debt Settlement Truthiness Purchase Form

• What are your fees?

CRN Full Service Settlement Fees are currently 15% of what we save you – AFTER we save it. There are costs for our materials. We refer to this cost as membership fees. Membership fees are fully credited against any future success based settlement fees as an offset. Rather fair, if I may be so bold…

You even have a limited and life time refund policy! Check out the Truthiness Form for all the details!

• How do I know you are legit?

There are a myriad of ways to check us out and compare us to other companies offering debt relief services:

1. Length of time in business.
2. You have many mainstream media articles and radio interviews about us which you can find links to on our press and media page.
3. Regulatory participation encouraging measures be taken to curb abuse in the debt settlement industry.
4. There is no shortage of members who have shared their experience working with us by writing to CRN. The CRN site has many customer quotes alternating throughout the pages.
5. We are also starting a new way for people to share their experience with us by having a testimony blog post here at debt bytes. This is where people can share openly and unedited (unless they use harsh profanity). How do you know those quotes are real? If we faked it and got caught it would be false and misleading advertising. We have a record of all. What if I am just saying this to get one over on unsuspecting consumers? Well, I just admitted to knowing it would be false and misleading to do so. That would be like…. fraud or something.
6. You have the BBB – Consumer Recovery Network has an A – Folks, that’s not easy to do in this industry!
7. Also, Google (not to leave out all the other fine search engines out there – but I did) the name of any company you want to research, add a plus sign (no spaces), then add the words scam, complaint or review. Like this: Consumer Recovery Network+Review

I am sure there are more ways to complete your due diligence. You could call my mom, for example.

• How do I know I can trust you?

This is a HUGE question! This is especially important given the track record of many companies offering debt settlement and the massive amount of negative media coverage surrounding the industry. The CRN business model is designed to build your confidence in us as well as the product & service we support – from day one. We will earn your trust.

• Why should I listen to you?

• Aren’t you just trying to sell me something?

You should listen to what our specialists have to say when we do a consultation with you because you could avoid making a huge mistake! One of which might be trying debt settlement on to see if it fits – this would include working with us!

We do have a product for sale. We do have services you pay for AFTER you see and like the results.

We DO NOT have sales people!

Our Specialists you consult with can often be found discouraging you from going down a path that would involve working with us – thereby paying us anything. I personally deter more people from trying to avoid bankruptcy through debt settlement than I encourage into it.

That’s a free service by the way, those consults. If you feel the consult was of value and are thankful, please consider donating a bag of non perishable food items to your local food bank in return. We know times are tough for you, but there are those for whom times are even tougher.

For those of you reading this post that have already talked to a debt Settlement company (or you call one later); call them back and pose these questions. They may not have as much fun answering them as I have.

If you have a question for us, you can click on ASK CRN (and get mostly serious answers too). And, as always, your comments are welcomed below! Break’s over. Back to work for me.

Edit: Merriam-Webster
truthiness (noun) – 1 : “truth that comes from the gut, not books” (Stephen Colbert, Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report,” October 2005)

Every day I receive a daily Google alert in my e-mail inbox that features links to articles, press releases and blogs about some aspect of debt settlement. It’s one of the ways that I stay abreast of what is happening in my industry and it’s the kind of information that any financially-troubled consumer might find by searching on the Internet for helpful resources using key words like debt settlement, debt problems, debt settlement firms, or debt negotiation. However, I’ve been dismayed to see that more often than most of what I read in these alerts is not factual and appears to have been written by debt settlement firms or their representatives with the goal of getting unsuspecting consumers who are confused and scared about their financial situation to work with them.

Here are common examples of the kinds of misleading blather I read in the alerts that show up in my e-mail box each morning:

• Press releases that supposedly are announcing news about a particular debt settlement firm or some aspect of settlement. In fact, the releases contain no news content of any sort and are being used by unethical firms to get consumers to click through to their web sites. At least one of the wire services transmitting these “press releases” appears to be little more than a vehicle for posting articles on the web and not a true wire service at all.

• Poorly written articles about settlement with titles that have been chosen to make it appear as though the articles actually provide valuable advice and information to consumers who need help managing their debts. In fact the information in these articles is marginally useful at best and sometimes totally misleading. You’ll find the real purpose of these articles in a closing paragraph where readers are encouraged to contact a debt relief network, which the articles claim is comprised of highly ethical settlement firms with proven track records for helping consumers. Don’t believe it!

• Half-written blog posts about some aspect of debt that are surrounded by lots of ads for debt settlement firms. I assume that the agenda of whoever writes these posts is less about completing the post and providing readers with truly useful advice and information and more about getting readers to click on one or more of the ads.

• For-profit debt settlement organizations that use names to make them sound like they are non-profits or that imply that they are affiliated with a federal government debt settlement program. The theory here is that consumers will be more apt to trust a non-profit or a firm that’s affiliated with the government. Fact: Debt settlement firms are businesses, not nonprofits, and there is no federal debt settlement program.

• Articles, blogs and press releases encouraging consumers to visit specific debt settlement forums before choosing a debt settlement firm. Supposedly, consumers who participate in these forums will have an opportunity to communicate directly with other consumers who are working happily with a debt settlement firm or who have already settled their debts with the help of a particular firm. Although there are legitimate forums where consumers can obtain truly useful information, some forums have been created by debt settlement firms or their representatives and if you participate in one of them, the consumers you communicate will be nothing more than people who are being paid by the firms to share information with you, to gain your trust and to recommend the firms to you. Other forums work a little differently. For example, in some of them, someone will try to get you to provide him with your name and e-mail address and then that individual will sell your information to a debt settlement firm. Not long after, the firm will contact you offering to help you resolve your debt problem.

Obviously you must be very, very careful when you search for debt settlement assistance online because there are a lot of firms out there who are willing to use underhanded and misleading tactics to gain your trust and who are all too ready to promise you the moon, take your money and give you little or nothing of real value in return. Therefore, before you share any information with anyone on a debt settlement forum, before you agree to work with any debt settlement firm or to pay the firm money, check it out with the Better Business Bureau, http://www.bbb.org/us/Find-Business-Reviews and with your state attorney general’s office, http://www.naag.org/attorneys_general.php. In other words, when it comes to debt settlement the old adage caveat emptor, or buyer beware, definitely applies.

Michael Bovee

Settlement with creditors is a great way to deal with debt when you are unable to maintain consistent payments. It is however, not a cake walk, though many in my industry will sell it as such.

This post was inspired by a consult I did this morning with a gentleman in Pennsylvania looking at settlement as an approach to dealing with his unmanageable debt. He wondered onto our website while searching out his options, after having already consulted with another company in the industry.

His unsecured debt totaled $22,000, spread out over 7 accounts. His minimum payments are just over $900.00 a month. His interest rates on most of the accounts are over 20%. That is what’s killing him. He would be able to meet minimums, but for the higher interest, and likely be very successful using an aggressive debt rollup, or debt snowball strategy, to get out of debt quickly and unscathed. His plight, when outlined to creditors, has thus far resulted in “Dude meets wall”.

The company he consulted with prior to me outlined a 36 month program where he could pay into an account roughly 300.00 for 36 months and poof, his debt is gone. Never mind that $3300 of that money set aside over that time will go to the settlement companies fees, I’ll get to that in a moment. The sales person with whom he consulted is selling rainbows and unicorns for a commission. The 36 month plan for his situation is ridiculous for some of the following reasons.

Two of the accounts we discussed have balances of about $1000.00 and another one for $1500.00. Enrolling these accounts in a plan like this, unless they are the first ones settled (even then not advisable, unless left with no choice) is futile and silly. The math doesn’t work. Optimum balance reduction through settlement only happens when you are delinquent, often very delinquent (5 months or more). When you stop paying, default interest rates of 29-32% will be applied, late payments will be assessed, all of which could result, in some cases, in over limit fees being tacked on. Depending on when settlement is reached the amount of the debt could now be double. Can the debt be settled? Absolutely, but using 50% savings as an example, what did you actually save? Nothing, or close enough to nothing to prove that the math doesn’t work.

What if we take these 3 smaller accounts out of the equation? We are now working on $18,000. By aggressively saving and setting aside every penny, this family could be out of debt in less than 12 months and limit to near nonexistent, the risk of being sued on unpaid debt.

Now, I was completely upfront with this consumer about the way I saw his situation and perhaps he appreciates the candor and becomes a member. Perhaps the other consult he had sounded more appealing, with its 36 months, low (too low) payment to his savings for settlement and easier sounding approach. He will pay the typical fee in this industry, which by their very nature is harmful to the settlement process. The sales person will make his commission (some cases I have seen, commissions are in excess of 70% of client fee) for selling rainbows and unicorns.

He may ultimately be out of debt in 36 months, but it will have been a very long 36 months, and he will have paid too much, experienced too much grief, may be sued on one or more accounts and may miss out on strategies that could have been beneficial to recover his credit standing much faster (this is whole different topic for another post).

Moral to this post: Don’t buy into rainbows and unicorns unless you are into paying a salesman’s bills when you can’t afford your own. The settlement industries frontline is, for the most part, populated by sales people motivated by commissions. Rarely do you find a place where you can consult with, and talk to an experienced debt specialist on first contact, prior to forking over any fees and whose motivation is your success, not your money.

If you have hit the debt wall and want to learn about all of your debt management options, including debt settlement, visit Consumer Recovery Network. While you’re there, learn about becoming a member of Consumer Recovery Network (CRN), with no risk to you, and find out if you should pursue debt negotiation.

By: Michael Bovee
CRN President

kajnremv3q