Help with credit repair - Collections, Charge-offs, and a judgement

I'm ashamed to admit this, but I need to tell you. I hired Enlightened Debt Solutions myself. I paid them for about 7 months before I finally wised up and fired them. They immediately refunded the $400 that was in my trust account. Then I sent them a letter demanding that they return $2,000 of the other $3,100 that I paid them. Simultaneously with that, I went to the State Attorney General's website and filed a complaint against them under the Consumer Protection Code for basically taking my money and not delivering any value. I don't know if it was my letter or the letter of inquiry from the AD, but a couple weeks later, I received a check from Enlightened for a full refund of $3,500...even though I only asked for $2,000. They even messed up and over-refunded me and gave me back the $400 again.

I would STRONGLY urge you to pursue this same route. These companies live on people's ignorance. They are not a legit business and they do NOT want to be tangling with any AG's office.

 

I absolutely do NOT think it is too late....

And what's the harm anyway? I don't have that letter but I can give you a general rundown. I basically repeated to them all the promises they had made to me and how they turned out to be false--

(a) that they claimed to have special relationships with all the creditors that could get me great settlements but that most of the creditors told me directly that they would not work with Enlightened;

(b) that they told me that if I tried to negotiate directly with the creditors myself that I would be sued and only by working with them could I avoid that...but that I ended up getting sued anyway;

(c) that what their various representatives told me verbally over the phone directly contradicted what the written materials I received. For example, they told me to stop paying on my bills and just save money to settle in a lump sum...but their materials had all kinds of different disclaimers that they weren't, in fact, advising that;

Basically, just be as specific as you can about what they promised and what they didn't deliver...and how you are now screwed as a result and being pursued all over the place. Conclude that you simply can't walk away from that amount of money and will be forced to pursue the matter with the State AG if they don't refund it. Be firm but nice.

If that doesn't work, go to your AG's website and file a complaint that says the exact same thing. Your AG will send them a copy of the complaint and ask them to respond. At that point, they'll probably refund your money instead of defending their practices.

Good luck!

 

Here's the address:

Enlightened Debt Solutions
1307 S. International Parkway Suite 1071
Lake Mary, Florida 32746

When I wrote to them, I requested an exact amount, so I would do that if you can. You definitely want to give the impression that you have all your ducks in a row in case they don't comply. If you don't appear to have any evidence of what happened, there's no reason for them to be scared.

 

I fail to see how much goodwill you can get out of a creditor? I've never seen a goodwill letter so don't know what one says or what one might say but I just can't see how much goodwill can come out of a situation such as you described below.

Both of them can be really tough to deal with. A good friend of mine got a judgment against him by Cap1 and wanted me to look the case over to see if anything could be done about the judgment. In looking over the case I found that the lawyer had used a phony affidavit in court. He prepared a federal case and filed it against the debt collector who provided the phony affidavit to the lawyer and against the lawyer as well. When the court ordered them to Rule 26(f) my friend demanded that they vacate the judgment and they replied that Cap1 still had to be paid. He told them that if they wanted to settle how Cap1 got paid was their problem not his. They ended up agreeing with him and vacated the judgment. That's how my friend got rid of his judgment. It is the only way I know of to get rid of judgments. Fixes your credit too.

That's even easier. Go to the DOE web site and get her into the William B. Ford program. If she makes her payments on time for a year the loan will be reinstated as a good account and the adverse listings will all be removed from her credit reports and made to show paid as agreed.

If she can't pay on time every month then let it go to collections and dispute the debt with the collection agency. The CA will send the validation demand to DOE who will send it to you and jerk the account away from the CA. In time they will turn it over to another CA and she can repeat the process until it falls off her credit reports. All she has to do is wonder if or when they will sue her for it. If they do that she will lose because she has no defense. Of course they will also grab any tax refunds she has coming until the debt is paid. In the mean time interest and late fees will keep on growing the amount she owes. And of course she will never be able to get any more loans or grants to continue her education if she needs to do that. Student loans are almost impossible to get out of paying so the William B. Ford program is the best bet if she can meet the payments on time. If she is out of work then fighting the collection agencies until her proverbial ship comes in may be her only alternative.

Paid collection account? Lots of luck on that one. By paying it off she admitted that the listing was correct. If she is lucky she might find something about the account that is inaccurate and dispute it off that way. I've seen some claim they were able to get rid of paid accounts by disputing them so maybe she can too. About all you can do is try but I think you will need lots of luck to get the job done.

Continued next post.

 

I already discussed what it will probably take to get that vacated and off her record. If the lawyer didn't use any affidavit then the task will be more daunting but if you can find any violations the lawyer made then you might be able to get it removed by taking them to federal court. Trying to get the judgment vacated in local court would be almost impossible unless she can show fraud in the process. The NY AG recently launched a vigorous assault on judgments and debt collectors and threw some in jail and had hundreds of judgments declared null and void. One of the reasons was the fact that most of those vacated were default judgments in which the courts issued default judgments against defendants who were never served or improperly served. A friend of mine in NY got a default judgment vacated for that reason although he did it long before the AG went after the debt collectors. He knew that the day he was supposed to have been served happened to be a day on which a heavy snow storm had hit the area making travel almost impossible. So he started checking things out and found out that the process server had served almost 400 defendants that day and some of them were as much as 100 miles apart. He took the debt collector to federal court and beat them to a pulp. That's how he got rid of his judgment.

Another friend of mine who also lives in NY (the Queens) has a business there. He was served on a Saturday when his business is closed. The process server claimed that the service had been performed at the defendant's home which was false, of course. He too took the case to federal court and won so got rid of his judgment also. Maybe your GF also ran afoul of a lying process server or maybe her case was one of those that was vacated by the Ny Attorney General. If so then that one can be challenged and maybe she won't even have to sue them in federal court to get the job done.

You mention Chase Bank as having two accounts in default. Both Cap1 and Chase are tough cookies to deal with in court but it can be done.

I'd have to agree with you on that.

Yes, I'd like to see that myself. I must admit that I have actually seen a great many sample letters that worked. All the ones I ever cordially invited either the debt collector or their attorney or the credit bureaus or all three to attend the next session of federal court and those invitations were usually hand delivered by a United States Marshall. Those invitations are seldom ignored. It really gets their attention most of the time. I do have another friend who filed a federal case for $82K against a major bank for FCRA violations. He too had a judgment in lower court but the plaintiff failed to show and the court dismissed the case. Later they tried to reopen the case and the judge let them reopen and immediately dismissed it again without a hearing. The second time he dismissed it with prejudice meaning they could never open it again or even bring a new case related to the same issue.

He got a default against the bank because they failed to show in federal court but they came back and filed to get the case reopened because according to them my friend had them served at the wrong address. The battle is still going on but my friend called me yesterday and told me they sent him an email offering him $2500 to settle and said they would give him until the 22nd of this month to accept or they would reopen the lower court case and get a new judgment against him. That leaves both of us wondering just how in the world they think they can do that after the local judge dismissed the case with prejudice. Now we are both wondering how to deal with their ultimatum if we can survive the almost uncontrollable fits of laughter brought on by their stupidity. To make matters worse for them they have committed the same violations all over again while the case is ongoing. They just keep on doing incredibly stupid things. My friend summoned them to deposition and incredibly they failed to come to the deposition even though the summons was signed by the judge so my friend filed a motion to show cause why they should not be held in contempt of court. We will see how they get out of that one.

I would recommend that you study the case carefully to see if you can find some way to uncover one or more violations and take them to federal court. That is the real way to get the job done. There are many forums on the net that will tell you all their pet theories for vacating void judgments. Suijuris.com is one of them. They got their name from their theory that when one files their response to a complaint they start off with
1. COMES NOW THE DEFENDANT, BILLY BOB, SUI JURIS AND HEREBY BITCHES ABOUT ?????(whatever).

The legal definition of Sui Juris is that the person who claims to be Sui Juris is really stating that s/he is a real live person of sound mind and body. As though the court could care less about that. (LOL)

There are lots of other forums with lunatic theories that are even nuttier. Notary Presentment, Notary dishonor, conditional acceptance, and many more crazy ideas abound on the net. Creditors-in-commerce is a google group that promotes some of those fruit cake ideas. They also have something called A4V and A4VR4V whatever that is. Their idea is that my some magic hook or crook they can turn the whole thing upside down and somehow become the creditor instead of the debtor. Nice trick if you can do it. (LOL).

Good! I live in NY state. The SOL has not passed yet.

Thanks for the help. Please ask me anything, and I would be glad to post it. I just need some guidance.[/quote]Don't know if I have given you any guidance or not. All I can tell you is that more than 28,000 people have taken debt collectors including attorneys to federal court and 98% of them have been successful. On average they came out of it with at least $3800 cash in their pockets plus judgments vacated and a cleaned up credit report. Now then, my question to you is how many letters can you find on or off the internet that can do that for you?