We are kind of lost on what to do. Unfortunately we've had some bad circumstances and can't make payments on two major credit card bills the last 4 months. They've been racking up the 30% interest and fines since. We're looking into all income solution possible. As a solution, we've asked the credit card companies to forgive the last 2 years of interest and let us pay a 0% period and low payment for a while. That has not gone over well with them. They want to forgive a very small token interest (maybe two months high interest) and make us pay enormous payments (which we can't pay at this moment). Option 2 is a smaller payment (still out of reach) which leaves in all of the interest. I seem to think that there is some sort of compromise in between besides bankruptcy which we have told them is our option 3 (which isn't really, we wouldn't want to do that, but we had to tell them how serious it was). We live in Texas. Who do we talk to help us? When we ask to talk to the hardship department, they tell us they are. If we talk to a debt counseling service, they just consolidate all the same dollars, high interest and all with an unmanageable payment. Somehow there has to be some sort of compromise besides bankruptcy I hope? One of us works and the other is working part time trying to get full time work ... doing everything we can to catch up, etc, after some unfortunate stuff.
Hi there, any suggestions? BOA has quit calling. Not sure what that means, but it makes me nervous. Citibank keeps calling but we don't know what to say. In the meantime, working every new job lead possible!
There is a point in time where bk is no longer an option but a necessary point.Find who will work with you at a payment that is fair to both parties and who won't work with you and send them a token or nothing at all.These are hard times and not getting better,so think of your family first and the rent or mortage next,have to eat and sleep.This will pass so take a deep breath,you might try a supervisior when you talk to them.
Not sure what that means? I'll tell you exactly what that means. It means you will soon start getting calls from some debt collector. Will you know what to say to them? You will if you click on my signature line links and look in the left hand column for the link that says 18QUESTIONS. You should print out the list and keep it near your phone. Next you will want to listen to the audio recordings and you will learn exactly how to deal with those phone calls. What to say to Citibank? The answer to that is simple too. Either you have the spare money to pay them in order to get them off your back or you don't. If you do then I highly recommend that you use that spare money and pay them off immediately. Of course you already said you don't have it so you have nothing you can say to them. If you have nothing you can say to them then why even bother to answer their phone calls? Nothing to be gained by answering their phone calls if you have nothing to say that they want to hear. Of course they will turn it over to a debt collector. Then you already know what to say to them and how to deal with their phone calls. You won't get more than maybe 3 or 4 phone calls max and then you won't have to put up with any more of those either. Of course, you will be wishing they would call so you can have some more fun with them and rack up some more violations which you can use against them later but they won't keep on calling so you want to keep a careful written record of all their phone calls, time, date, what was said. You should also record them and keep those recordings on your computer for later reference when you will need to be able to recall exactly what was said when you make your written transcription of what was said. Those recordings can be extremely valuable. If you want to do so you can also end those calls very quickly with one simple little trick. They will call and ask for you by your first name. Naturally, you won't recognize the caller as a friend who would normally use your first name when calling. That is your cue telling you that a debt collector is on the other end so when they ask you who you are you can say, WHAT'S LEFT OF HIM/HER, yes. You will be telling the truth because there is a little less left of each and every one of us every day. (LOL) They may ask again and you repeat the same thing. They will hang up real quick because they have to be certain they are talking to the right person and they are too stupid to realize you are just being funny with them. Never fails.(LOL). At some point in time they will send you a demand letter. Of course, if they call first and then at some point in time more than 5 days after that first phone call they send you a demand letter they have already violated at least once because they are required to have a demand letter in your hands within 5 days after their initial contact with you. You should already have your validation letter all prepared and ready to go certified mail return receipt requested and get it in the mail not later than 25 days after the date on their letter. Make a photo copy of their demand letter to attach to your validation demand so you don't have to explain what you are referring to in your validation demand letter. Then start preparing for your next step. You need to understand that there is no time limit within which they must respond. They don't ever have to respond to your validation demand if they don't want to and there is nothing you can do about that or so the law and many other self styled experts would have you believe but do you really want to take a chance on living with this hanging over your head forever and wondering what is going to happen next? I don't think so and if you don't do something that just might happen. In order to prevent that you need more ammunition to fire at them. Lots more and on a given time table so I recommend that within 15 days after the date on the green card you send them your estoppel letter. You can find that here on this board or on most other such forums. The estoppel letter is actually pretty silly since it has no actual basis in fact or in law and even quotes a Western District of Missouri court case from 1949 which had nothing at all to do with debt collection but they probably won't realize that fact. You don't care either way since your objective is to cause them to do something besides just letting you sit there stewing and frying. So silly or not, send it anyway. Wait another 15 days and send them and the original lender a letter outlining all the violations they might have committed up to that time. Then start preparing your intent to sue letter and your federal court case against them outlining at least a couple of their violations and send that to them 15 days after they got your last letter. In your cover letter let them know that if you have heard nothing from them within 30 days after they get your intent to sue you will file the case in federal court with no further notice. If they don't respond to that then go ahead and pull the trigger. Sue them. If they turn it over to a lawyer that's the time to sue in federal court regardless of how long it has been since you sent them your intent to sue. Then get ready to start your federal case against the lawyer and the debt collector. After all, the lawyer is a debt collector too and lawyers usually make far more mistakes than debt collectors do. Get ready to defend in local court even though you understand that you will most likely lose in court. It really makes no difference whether you lose in local court or not. Fight them anyway because the more you fight the greater the chances you might win and the more chances you will get violations out of the lawyer to use against him in federal court where you have a much better chance of winning. Another nice benefit of dealing with them in federal court is that your name will get put into a data base of people who have sued debt collectors in federal court. After that, other debt collectors will be much less inclined to mess with you because they don't want to take a chance of getting sued. So now you know that you can start learning how to get your problems resolved by simply keeping up with the links in my signature line because a day never goes by without more information being added to it. Much of it is added automatically by lawyers, debt collectors, court cases and other news that can help you greatly in your fight to get your life back on track. Heck, I even keep track of Joshua Heckathorne and all the articles he writes on other forums such as Twitter and others. As you probably know, he is one of the moderators here and writes a great many articles and tips some of which are really great. He is an excellent author and writer and well worth keeping up with.
