so I have a pretty big amount of debt, and I have been thinking about seeking out a debt counseling service. a friend of mine used Incharge Debt Solutions and it seemed to work pretty well for him. he told me I should contact them.I checked out there website and it seems pretty good. http://incharge.org but I am still hesitant. has anyone used this service before, do you have any advice for me?
What do you expect them to do that you can't do yourself? What do they cost that you could instead apply to paying your debt yourself? See their reports on bbb.org.
I'm just seeing your message. I unfortunately signed up with InCharge and i tell you, i'm worse off now than i was when I first started. They do absolutely nothing that you cannot do yourself (ie. negotiating lower interest rates to pay off debt and settling on a managemable monthly payment). My Day lates are up, i have closed accounts, it's a complete mess right now. Right now i'm in the process to see if i can settle some debts with pennies on the dollar with these CA's, i've been trying to find some info on that here on this board. All i've been finding is how to dodge the CA's, but in my case, they hold the debt from the OCs. Normally i wouldn't deal with CA's but how InCharge messed me up is that they had me thinking they had arranged payments with the OCs and that wasn't the case, they arranged payments with the CA's so I'm in a position where I have to deal with the CA's to get them off my report somehow.
Common story. What does their BBB report show? Are they, in fact, making payments to your debtors? Have they sent you statements showing what you have paid into your account, and what payments have been made on your behalf? Have they, in fact, negotiated agreements, and sent you copies of those agreements showing the agreed terms? In other words, are they doing what they said they would for what you are paying them?
I still haven't yet seen the negotiation agreements or what they negotiated in terms of interest rate. Basically the past 6 months that i was working with them was a waste of time and a detriment to my credit report. In some of the talks i had with them, they've mentioned that most of the creditors never got back to them. Which is why I decided to withdraw from the program on Friday because my lender whom i'm working with to get qualified for a house in June told me that working with a Debt Counseling Agency is similar to filing for Chapter 13. I'd highly advise anyone to not get into it. Yes they have been making payments to my creditors it's been showing up on my statements.
