The Hidden Traps in Debt Relief Ads You’re Seeing Right Now

Back with the Get Out of Debt guy, I am Steve Rhode,
the old authentic Get Out of Debt guy.
And, you know, if you have debt and you have a phone,
you probably recognize this particular problem
because every time you open TikTok or Instagram
or Facebook, there’s another secret program.
That right, David, say, hey, what’s going on, everyone?
You know, there seems to be always another government-backed
relief program or some guy in a rented Lamborghini
telling you he’s found a loophole,
the bank still wants you to know about.
Today, we’re going to be pulling back the curtain
on the hidden traps and debt relief
that you’re seeing right now.
And we’re going to fill you in on how easy it is
to manipulate you to screw over your future
for the profit of someone else.
We’re going to talk about TV ads, radio spots,
the perfect TikTok ad.
And, you know, those click here
to erase 80% of your debt ads that you see
and why they’re chasing you around the internet.
We’ll also show you exactly which emotional buttons
are pushed to get you to react.
And the important thing about this is,
we need to let you know so that when you see these ads,
you’ll be able to go, oh, that is reason number two
why I feel compelled that I must click on this app.
Now, you’ll know.
Reason number nine, which I think is really relevant
and important, I’m going to have to move up
my list here, Damon, because I think it’s really important
based on some recent podcasts that we’ve done.
So we’re going to walk you through the fake government
programs, the illegal upfront fees,
the phony deadlines, the phony monthly payments,
and why social media influencers say you can pay off
$80,000 at that in six months
and not have any pain about it.
By the end of the episode, you’ll be able to look
at a debt relief ad or a TikTok guru
and instantly say, oh, I see what you’re doing.
And there’s a bigger promise because you’ll learn how
legitimate options and non-secret loopholes
can really help you get out of debt.
Damon, you know, you and I’ve seen these ads for decades.
Are you seeing them more often than I am?
Oh, man, and he said something earlier,
it’s always a secret that banks don’t want you to know
like every time.
Yeah, I think what’s good.
Well, go ahead.
And I mean, you said, you know, if you’re in debt,
even if you’re not in debt, these ads are following you around.
I mean, but we’ve been seeing these things for over 20 years
and the ads themselves haven’t changed that much.
They just keep going on to new platforms.
Oh, Facebook’s popular.
Now they’re on Facebook and then TikTok and Instagram
and all, and it’s like, I was telling you the other day,
yesterday, I don’t even remember what,
I think I was on YouTube.
I’m Mario Lopez.
He’s talking what?
Hacking debt relief.
And I’m like, Mario’s taking so well, I sent you a picture of an ad
that I saw while I was traveling this past weekend.
And it was a picture of a guy with all these face tattoos
and promising some sort of incredible debt relief.
And the funny thing about it was,
it was actually an ad from Forbes,
which I always associated with, you know,
the magazine that was doing incredible business work
and apparently now they’re doing lead generation
because after I sent that picture to you,
I actually clicked on the ad and it went to…
Well, I saw the Forbes.
Yeah, well it went to Forbes on it.
And it was a lead gen form.
You had to fill it out before you ever figured out,
who am I giving my information to?
Hey, we all got to make money.
No, you know, nothing.
Nobody makes money until something gets sold.
Hey, newspapers don’t pay like they used to do.
No, that’s true.
That’s true.
So hopefully if you’re watching us on YouTube,
you’re seeing a video podcast
and if you’re listening to us on all the other platforms
that we’re on, no video.
I don’t know if that’s good or bad for you.
Well, ironically, if we are on YouTube
because of the subject we’re talking about,
Mario may pop up at some point.
Yeah, he might get a debt relief.
We didn’t endorse that.
So we don’t control the ads.
Yeah, I say get YouTube premium.
I really like that.
All right, there’s a,
there are a number of reasons why
debt relief marketing, whether it’s on YouTube
or any other platform is so insidious
because it works because there are
certain emotional buttons that can be pushed
to get you to react.
Now, a moment ago, Damon, you mentioned
it’s the same crap, you know, different day.
And it’s so true because in my lifetime in debt relief,
originally we started out with print ads
about the President Bush amazing debt relief program.
And then, you know, we moved more towards the digital area
and then it became the Obama program
and then the, you know, the Trump program
and then the, you know, it’s just been one.
And then, and then Biden, the Biden program.
And then, and then now Trump’s got a new program.
He’s back.
So, but the, it’s number nine on my list.
And, but I think I want to talk about first
because not that long ago,
and it’s number one, not that long ago,
we did a podcast about Dave Ramsey.
And it resonated with some people.
But Ramsey, I’m going to tell you this.
And then I think if, if you’re not a fanboy,
you will recognize how he manipulates you
because one of the top 10 ways to manipulate you
into debt relief is number nine,
which is shame-based messaging.
Now, let me know if any of this sounds familiar, Damon.
This is how it sounds, okay?
You sign for it.
You have a moral obligation to pay every penny,
no matter how long it takes.
Real adults don’t file bankruptcy.
They hustle harder.
Does that sound on message, there?
It does.
You could get hired.
Yeah.
Well, so here’s why it sells.
So that is what is happening.
That is what people are being told.
And here’s what it sells.
Shame keeps people from exploring
legal rational options like bankruptcy,
which might actually free up their life and retirement.
And if a guru can keep you stuck in shame,
they can sell you years of systems and budgets
and coaching instead of a one decisive fix.
Well, and it’s not just Dave Ramsey.
No, no.
It’s banks use the whole system uses shame
and the credit score to just keep you slaving away.
All the debt relief programs use it, right?
Oh, you don’t want to file bankruptcy.
That’s gonna ruin your credit for 10 years.
And this way you could at least pay back some of it
and that everybody uses shame to convince you
to keep slaving away at this debt
or enrolling their program to cut it in half
or whatever it is.
Everything is designed to keep you away
from looking at any other option
that isn’t what the person on the phone
or the TV or the TikTok video.
Whatever they’re selling is the right thing
and everything else is the wrong thing.
Well, here’s what that’s universal and all the other.
Here’s what gets me about number nine,
the shame-based messaging is this moral sales pitch.
That causes people to question themselves
and to avoid logical math-based solutions
based on how they think other people will think about them
or how they’re afraid of what they’re gonna think
about themselves.
So you’ve watched more Ramsey than I have.
I’ve given up at this point.
But I actually like his show.
Yeah, but I just don’t like the yelling at people
and because there have been plenty of examples of that.
Oh yeah, I don’t agree with a lot of his results
or responses to the collars,
but it’s an interesting show for sure.
He puts on a good show, Steve.
Yeah, it puts on a good show.
It’s all that targeted marketing.
So fear and threat.
Now that’s another emotional hot button
that causes people to make bad decisions.
So here’s what happens.
You’re in debt and you’re feeling lost alone, afraid, confused,
ashamed, depressed, and that is not the time for you to go,
hey, I want to go learn how to reinvent the wheel.
Instead, it’s natural and it’s human for people to say,
hey, I want this pain to go away.
And so what they latch onto is the first message
that sounds magical and as you’ve said in the past,
Damon, they’re selling you magic beanstalk letters
that make things feel like they’re going to automatically
disappear.
And so one of the sales pitches they can use,
shame based marketing, really that just pisses me off.
But this one irritates me as well,
because I’ve seen it over the years,
is the fear and threat marketing pitch
where they say they fill in whatever blank debt relief program.
If you don’t act today, your wages could be garnished
or you could be subject to legal action
or your file is being reviewed for escalation.
And these are already geared towards people
who are already in debt and fearful
and don’t know exactly what the right score is.
And so these legal threats can cause people to take action,
which is not good for them.
Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I have actually recently had
a few clients come on board where it was like,
you know, talk about like, you know,
out of the pan into the fire kind of scenarios where they’re,
you know, when I do an initial phone call,
I always ask them to kind of paint me a picture.
What’s going on, you know, what’s your situation,
what are you dealing with, what are you hoping to learn for me?
And in the last two months, I’ve had like three or four
where I was like, well, I was, you know, in his debt
and then you know, I got this consolidation loan
and do do do do do and I was still falling behind on that.
That wasn’t working. So then I,
this one company called me and that’s had a pretty good
and I got into that.
But then I started researching it some more
and then I realized, oh, that’s not what I thought it was.
So then I canceled that and I got into this other one
that was talking to me and then it was, you know,
promised me better thing and now yeah.
And it’s just like, you know, one after it.
But the common theme was they were just stressed out.
About the debt and they didn’t,
they couldn’t afford it anymore
and they didn’t know what to do.
And so this, this organization was kind of offering
this lifeline, even though I guess the lifeline
wasn’t tied to anything solids,
pulling on the rope and it was just coming in.
It was made of lead.
Yeah, but it was just like, you know,
these salespeople just get, get you on the phone
and they, they’re good at telling you what you want to hear
and it’s always about, hey, here’s what we’re going to do
we’re going to lower your payments,
we’re going to hire us, we’re going to handle everything
and they’re long on promises,
but they’re short on specifics.
And the biggest thing is they never focus
on what your other options are.
It’s always just sign the contract right away.
Sign it right away, like they don’t want you to research it,
they don’t want you to sleep on it.
They really want you to sign it, you know,
right on the phone if they can get you to do that.
And it’s like, don’t know, anything that you’re going to do,
you have time, there’s no lawsuit right around the corner
in most cases, just kind of ignore most of that stuff.
If you think you want to enroll in some program
or get some help, you always have time to take a step back
and think about it.
And if they’re trying to pressure you away from that,
there’s a reason and the reason is not for your benefit.
No, and there are two important reasons here.
One is that 99% of the time,
except when you’re talking to like Damon
for advice and you’re talking to Damon, 99%.
That’s in bias.
That’s good.
That’s true.
Because 99% of the time, whoever you’re talking to
is a commissioned salesperson.
And their goal is not to give you sound financial advice.
Their goal is to sell you whatever widget
that they’re trying to sell.
Now here is a key point.
If you want to cut this right to the chase
and you want to find out what their intentions are,
when they’re pitching you some program,
ask them if you can have a copy of the client contract
so that you can review it.
They will do everything to prevent you from seeing that.
And they’ll flat out say no.
That’s a warning sign.
It used to be, you know, back in the day,
you could find contracts of the company contracts online.
But then they all went away.
And so I’ve actually had people,
when I’ve done secret shopper calls
and I’ve asked, hey, sounds great, man,
let me look at the contract.
I want to look it over.
No.
And so anybody tells you that that’s a quick hang up.
Now here’s another one, the relief fantasy.
You will erase 75 to 85% of your debt
if you sign up today with one simple call,
one simple form fill.
You can be out of debt in a fraction of time
for less than you owe.
But people are listening to what the promised relief is,
not what the facts are, not how many people
actually get that relief.
But that is just a sales message.
And one of the ways that we’ve seen that unfold
over the years, Damon is when some consumers
on the phone with one of these companies
and the company goes, your payment is going to be $800 a month.
And the person says, you know, I can’t afford that.
And the company says, Damon, what does the company say?
Oh, hold on a second.
Let me see here.
Oh yeah, you know, well, we could look at this
and we do this.
Well, you know, what about 725?
I think we can get this done for 724.
Oh, no, I can afford 700.
And that’s the most I could afford.
You know what, hold on, hold on.
Because you’re my favorite customer, hold on.
You know what, hold on, I gotta talk to my manager.
I’ll be right back.
You got a car to sell me, too?
Yeah, you know what, okay, for you,
if you want to get this done today,
I think we can do it for 700 a month.
I think we can get that done for you.
It’s gonna be more work, but I think we can get it done.
And people fall for it.
All right, we already, well, and it’s not even,
it’s not even so much falling for it as much as it is.
I mean, people just don’t feel like they have a way out.
Yeah, they don’t have a frame of reference either.
They’re getting bombarded with all this messaging
and it’s all kind of going to the same place.
So they end up calling on these different ads, you know,
because they’re drowning in his debt
and all these companies are,
it’s said, most of these ads that you see
promising to cut your debt, it’s all debt settlement companies.
This is being clear about that.
I mean, once in a while,
a credit counseling program, well, yeah,
the month, there’s so much we can unpack out of that.
But the thing is, you know, you’ll start calling
all these different companies
and you’ll start noticing that common theme.
And so you just kind of assume, well, this can’t,
this gotta be all legit
because all these companies are essentially
promising the same thing.
And then you just kind of get into this,
well, I’m just gonna find the guy
that’s got the lowest monthly payment mode
and has got some good reviews.
And then you end up signing up in that program
because the guy sounded the best.
And there’s a whole bunch of we can unpack
about how debt settlement companies operate.
But, you know, earlier I said, Steve,
what he was saying about me being non-commissioned
is, you know, sounding really biased.
But in that vein, I’m gonna be very biased because it’s just,
it’s just so, I mean, I don’t know what the right word is,
but here’s my own statement.
Oh, the right word is true.
If you have debt and you’re seeing these ads
and you’re calling these companies,
and by all means, call them, you know,
what you’ll find about me is, I’m all about
getting all the information so you can make a good decision
versus the salespeople you’re talking to
don’t want you to make calls to other people.
I’m all for it.
The more salespeople you call, the better I look anyway.
But here’s my offer.
I don’t charge a fee for the initial consultations anyway.
So if you’re looking at it,
some of these ads, you’re calling these companies,
you’re maybe thinking about it,
you’re not sure if you should do it or not.
You know, you’ve called five or six of them.
They all kind of sound the same, but a little bit different.
Just set up an appointment with me.
I don’t charge anything and say,
hey, look, this is what I’m thinking about doing.
I’m thinking about this company,
think about this company, think about this company.
I’ll tell you what they are and what they’re doing.
And then you can decide if it’s something that’s right for you.
But I promise you, when I explain to you
what’s happening, you’ll go, huh, that’s not exactly
what the sales guy said.
Maybe I should take a step back.
But I don’t charge for that.
You can just have a conversation with me.
That’s it.
Yeah, you can reach Damon at DamonDay.com.
D-A-M-O-N-D-A-Y.com.
Now, here’s something even a little bit more insidious.
If you know anything about digital marketing,
then you will know about remarketing.
So if a consumer clicks on the debt relief companies ad,
goes to the site, they’re being tracked at that point.
And so if they don’t respond
within a certain period of time,
whether it’s days or weeks or whatever,
it can trigger a remarketing ad.
And the next ad will have an even bigger promise, right?
And then an even bigger promise.
So you will start to see, it’s funny.
The number of people I’ve talked to over the years
who say, I don’t know how they found out about me,
but all of a sudden I’m getting all these debt relief ads.
It’s because you clicked on one of them.
Yeah.
And then that gets disseminated amongst the lead generators
and all that and then all of a sudden,
everybody has your name.
Your phone’s blowing up.
Where you clicked on messages every single day.
You clicked on one on Facebook or TikTok or something.
Now they know what your intention is.
And so now you’re gonna get just hammered with these things.
Yeah.
And my favorite is, you know, maybe you’re in a situation
where you’ve applied for several consolidation loans,
legit outfits have been denied
because your utilization ratio or your credit score
or whatever.
And then all of a sudden,
after you get denied for consolidation loans,
your phone’s blowing up and leaving voicemails
with this great consolidation loan.
You only got three days, you got to call this back
and dead, dead, dead, dead, dead.
And all these people now calling you
for these great consolidation loans
are just debt settlement companies.
They’re offering you a fake consolidation loan.
It doesn’t exist.
You call them up, they take your information,
they go smoke a cigarette and they come back to,
I’m sorry, you don’t qualify for the consolidation loan,
but I’ve got a better program for you.
And then they just pitch you the debt settlement,
which was what they were gonna do the entire time,
but it’s just bait and switch marketing.
That’s all it is because they know you,
you want this fantasy consolidation loan
where you’re gonna take your 50 grand in debt
that you’re paying 25%
and some benevolent billionaire is gonna fund,
oh, here’s 50 grand at five percent.
Oh, yeah, just for you.
Just for you.
Yeah, we, oh, we can loan you $80,000 at five percent.
No, you won’t, no, you won’t, it doesn’t exist.
But it gets you to call.
And then now they have you on the phone
and they build it up like, oh, we’re gonna check for you
and you kind of like have a little hope
and then they knock you down and then you’re like,
oh, my gosh, what am I gonna do now?
They just deny me.
But I’ve got a better program for you.
And then you’re like, what?
And now you’re just set up to fall for whatever it is
because you just went from a little hope to a low
and now there’s some hope again, right?
And you just wanna grab onto that,
as you said, that life line made of lead.
Well, one of the things you might hear is they might say,
you know, your creditors are gonna settle for X percent.
There is no across the board settlement percentage.
And if anybody is telling you that,
you need to ask more questions
because every creditor is a separate negotiation.
And if they’re telling you, if you call and you say,
hey, I just spoke to X debt settlement company
and they said my payment’s 700 and they go,
oh, I’m glad you called because your payment here is 600.
Or they tell you, you know, they said they could settle it
for 75% off in the guy that says,
we can settle for 80% off.
Those are all made up fictitious numbers.
Yeah, it goes, it comes down to this.
Forgiveness versus permission.
A sales guy can tell you anything he wants to make the sale.
Why?
Because if he doesn’t make the sale, none of it matters anyway.
If he makes the sale, at least now he has a chance
to make the commission.
And then when you find out later that he was lying
his ass off, that’s where the forgiveness part comes out.
Maybe you misheard it or,
and you’re never going to talk to that salesman again anyway.
You’re going to be talking to some account manager six months
later.
And they’re going to tell you that,
well, maybe you’re misremembering what he said.
Well, maybe he didn’t say it quite like that.
Yeah, there’s a very important twist here
that a lot of people don’t get.
The salesperson can lie their ass off to you.
Right now you’re like, what?
Yes, they can lie their ass off.
They can tell you whatever they want to tell you.
Because the minute you sign that client agreement,
that client agreement will say in there
that none of the verbal representations
that you were made before signing this agreement apply.
And this agreement…
And nobody reads those.
And this agreement is binding for everything that we do.
And yet, you’re being rushed through that
and not allowed to see…
That’s like 25 pages.
Yeah.
Yeah, it’s like 20 and they’re like, flip here,
flip the page five, put an ex there,
put your initials there, do this, do that.
It’s like a mortgage.
You know, they come out with a stack of papers like this.
And do you want to read it?
No, I don’t.
Okay, we’ll just sign here.
You know how they sit across the table and it’s all marked
so they know, flip to this.
Okay, sign here.
Okay, this just says that you really like this house.
They’ll sign here.
Okay, this says that you’re fine with everything.
We looked over the sign here.
That’s kind of how they do it.
And then, oh, you got three days to take it home
and read it over and let us know.
It’s too much legalese.
Now, another tactic that that relief companies will use too
is they may send a notary to your house
to get you to sign the client agreement.
Now, that sounds like this is going to be an in-person
presentation.
The reason they’re doing it is because there’s a loophole
on advanced feeds for doing it.
But when that person shows up at your house
and you start to ask them questions about the program,
what you will hear is, I don’t know.
I’m an independent person.
They hired to come by and have you signed these papers?
I don’t know anything about the program.
They might as well send an Uber driver
to kind of do the same thing.
Would have been better and cheaper, by the way.
All right.
Yeah, they could have got an Uber guy to do it
for like $5 going 15 miles.
That’s a different show.
Penny stupid.
Yeah.
Yeah, visit the Penny Stupid channel on YouTube
and you’ll find out what that’s all about.
All right.
The Instagram guru.
So some person in a rented Airbnb beautiful kitchen
with a rented car out front is going to tell you,
I used to be 80 grand in debt, but I’m free now
because I found this one script or this one letter
or as I mentioned earlier,
Damon’s Magic Beanstalk letters.
So Damon, can you explain
where that Magic Beanstalk comes from?
That’s always the secret.
Somebody doesn’t want you to know.
Yeah, the phrase Magic Beanstalk letters
that I’ve used for years and always gets a laugh from Steve.
But that comes from, they go by different names now,
but it’s basically these debt validation companies
where essentially it’s the new twist on debt settlement.
I say new, but they’ve actually been around
for almost 15 years now, maybe 20 years.
But essentially their pitch is, hey, look,
we will get rid of all of your debt for what,
they can make up whatever reason they want to make up
that the debt doesn’t really exist.
It’s not valid, but they are going to send these letters
to the banks pointing out different statutes,
different code, whatever it is.
And the banks are going to say, my fault.
Yeah.
And the bank is going to quiver at the mere thought
of these letters.
They’re going to quiver from laughing.
And the debt is going to magically disappear
when we send these special letters.
That’s where the Magic Beanstalk letters come in.
They have these Magic Beanstalk letters
and the debt will go away.
And my favorite part about this scam is the company itself
will typically charge you 30 to 50% of your actual debt.
So if you have $100,000 in debt with a straight face,
they’re going to try to charge you 30 to 50 grand
and they’ll spread it out over like four or five years,
of course, to be nice for the promise
that all of your debt will get wiped out.
But you’re going to still have to pay them 30 to 50% of it.
If you had 30 to 50%, or could come up with $30 to $50,000,
why not just negotiate with the banks
where you know it will actually be gone
rather than taking some sales guys word for it
that the Magic Beanstalk letters
are going to make the banks quiver and go away.
What’s actually going to happen is you’re going to end up
paying these guys probably about $8000 to $10,000
worth of this 30 to $50,000 fee.
And then you’re going to start swimming in losses
that the Magic Beanstalk letters didn’t get rid of.
And then you’re going to have zero money
to negotiate anything with the creditors
that are suing you because Magic Beanstalk
I took all your money.
Well, and the other thing too is
I don’t fall for the Magic Beanstalk.
Yeah, the other thing too that happens
that always makes me shake my head
is the debt relief company will say,
well, I’m sorry, your creditor didn’t agree
to let her didn’t honor it or whatever.
We’re going to just drop this account from your program.
How does that help me?
Well, they’ll say that you could get a pro-rad a refund
for that one account and there’s going to drop it out of there.
But good luck collecting on that.
And then if you, here’s how this scam actually works.
What does that shell game that they do?
I don’t know what you call it.
You don’t want to stream, but the way this works
is that’s the kind of how they get out of it.
The reality is these companies know
that not every creditor you have is going to sue you.
Now, I mean, unless you’re the most unlucky guy
on the planet, if you have 10 credit cards
you’re not going to get sued by all 10.
Now you might get sued by none of them,
which is unlikely.
You could get one or two lawsuits.
You could get four or five.
But they’re just playing the odds.
The magic bean stock letters aren’t doing anything.
In fact, honestly, I don’t really think they even send them.
If they were smart, they wouldn’t send them
because if they send those letters,
the banks more likely to sue you.
If they were smart, they would just tell you they’re sending
and they’re not.
But let’s say you get sued on two or three of your 10 accounts
and they just go, oh, yeah, the bank didn’t validate it correctly,
but it’s with an attorney now, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So we’re going to take that out of the program.
We’ll give you a pro-rad a refund.
That’s 10% refund because one out of 10 cards or whatever.
And then you don’t get sued on seven of those cards.
They still make 70% of that $30,000 fee.
Making you think they did something
and the reason you didn’t get sued was because
the magic bean stock letters,
but the reality is the reason you didn’t get sued is
because you got lucky.
Your number wasn’t drawn on that account.
And the other thing, depending on what state you’re in,
they have could be anywhere from three to,
I think that I think one states up to 10 years
and must have changed that recently.
They have three to 10 years to come after you.
So long after you’ve paid magic bean stock guy,
you can still be on the hook for this debt.
Yeah, and then magic bean stock guy is gone.
Yeah, and in some states,
you cannot actually be sued or have your wages garnished.
So what’s the point?
Yeah, if you live in Texas,
they have all set exemptions.
Pennsylvania, North Carolina.
There’s no wage garnishment now.
That doesn’t mean you can, to your creditors,
like I live in Texas, Nanna and Nanna.
Because there’s other things that they can do,
you know, levying bank accounts and put it in,
they could put a,
no, I don’t know, they could put a lien on,
they’d never be able to collect on the lien on the house
in Texas and Florida, but they can’t in Pennsylvania.
So there, there are some states
where it’s harder to collect money from you,
but there’s no state where you can just give your credit
to the middle finger and not ever have to worry
about anything happening.
That would be called moving to Belize.
If you move to Belize,
then you could probably give them the middle finger.
But if you’re still within the 50 states,
you still have to address it somehow.
Now, the other twist to this scam scheme
is that it will be pitched to you as,
this is a lawyer-based program.
But when you press them for,
because you cannot be,
you’re gonna have a lawyer represent you
unless that lawyer is licensed or authorized
to practice law in the state that you live in.
So when you push them on,
who is the lawyer in my state
that is actually representing me?
You will get a whole host of responses.
And you will not be able to talk to that person
because either some made up name,
they just found them on Facebook
or it was a sales pitch to begin with
and they don’t exist.
So you are not being represented by an attorney,
although an attorney may be part of whatever that program is.
Yeah, and then you can ask,
well, why do I need a lawyer?
You just spent half an hour telling me
how great your program is
and you have great relationships with all these banks
and you do business with them all the time
and they’re gonna be more than happy to roll over
and settle my debt for pennies on the dollar.
Why do I need a lawyer?
Well, that’s only in case you get sued
but don’t worry, nobody ever gets sued.
Yeah, and if you do get sued, we’re gonna drop you.
So don’t worry about it.
Yeah, and if you do get sued,
well, we’re just gonna try to settle that.
What’s the lawyer gonna do?
You borrowed the money.
That’s always my favorite, right?
I mean, you did borrow the money.
You bought stuff on the credit card.
What’s the lawyer gonna argue in front of the judge
if there was even a lawyer that was going to go
to court and represent you?
Right.
In most cases, there’s not.
Or there will be an additional fee for that.
There’s always an additional fee.
Right.
That’s extra.
All right, I have a bunch here,
but I have one more before I wanna wrap this up.
It is the secret loophole inside our hack.
We kinda talked about this before,
but here’s what it’ll sound like.
You may hear someone say, tell the bank this exact phrase.
This goes with the whole validation thing kind of.
And then they have to erase the debt.
Or they’ll say, use this code word
when you call the credit bureaus
and they must delete your account.
Or, you know what, we have a little known program
only insiders know about.
And if you hear that, if they can’t tell you what it is,
that’s a warning sign.
That is a giant red flag.
You know, Steve, you’ve been around longer than I have.
But the thing that’s, and I get it as a consumer,
you see this stuff maybe for the first time
and it brand new way, little known secret,
this, that, and the other, new Trump debt relief program.
And it’s like, I’ve been seeing the same crap for 20 years.
You’ve been seeing the same crap for 30 plus years.
Back even further.
So I am a big studier of the history of debt relief.
And this didn’t happen when I started in the 90s.
If you look at the history of debt relief,
this goes all the way back to the early 1940s
when the very first pro-raders came out,
where they said, we will take over your bills
and you only have to pay us one monthly fee every month.
That’s when it started and that’s when regulators
tried to crack down on it.
And ever since then, it’s just been whack-a-mole.
Yeah, but it’s just, I mean, I look at this stuff
and laugh, like I said, when I saw Mario Lopez
pop up on YouTube and I’m going, it’s like,
Morris, next, like, what are we doing here?
But he’s, and he’s just an actor.
He’s reading the script.
He’s supposedly interviewing a financial consultant
and they were very adamant to say,
and you recently appeared on Oprah, I guess that’s the big,
well, if you’re on Oprah, then obviously, then you,
and then she goes, and then the whole ad was about,
well, I can, I saw people’s debt with two secret words
and Mario’s like, oh, what are those words?
I’ll tell you, Mario, debt negotiation.
It’s just debt settlement.
I mean, people have been settling debt for 50 years,
but, well, more than that.
But it’s the new secret program.
It’s like, shut up.
It is, it is not a secret program.
All right, hey, I’m not.
Yeah, it’s just, it’s just debt settlement.
You call the number, you get a sales guy for debt settlement.
They’re going to pitch you on, what are your payments?
I’m going to lower them.
That’s going to be another video, but it’s so BS, it’s ridiculous.
And it’s really easy to see right through it
once you understand how it actually works.
But the main takeaway needs to be, you see all these ads.
Call them off if you want to take notes, get the information,
and then call me and we’ll review it,
and then you’ll realize, oh, yeah, I don’t want to do any of that stuff.
All right, so let me give you a rundown
and watch your phone, your feed,
or whatever you’re getting your media on for these things.
And you’ll go, oh, yeah.
Stephen Damon talked about that.
So if you see, if you have more than $10,000 in credit card debt,
stop scrolling, click here.
That’s just the emotional button and the fear trigger
to try to get you to click.
I used to work for a major bank.
I know all the secrets, right?
Insider authority, trying to make you think
they have some sort of secret.
They were like a bank teller out of college or something.
Yeah.
I got the insider secrets.
I worked the register.
My clients are wiping out 80% of what they owe.
That’s just a big promise, not based on anything.
All right, here is a 10-second gut checklist
that I made up for people.
And let’s see, I’ve got 10 items on it.
So Damon, you can pitch in on any of these 10
and let me know what you think.
Before you click or sign or give any information,
if they’re promising a specific percentage of debt reduction
before seeing your accounts and learning your situation,
what should you do, Damon?
Hang up the phone.
Okay.
I would say click, but the younger generation
doesn’t know what that means.
Mr. Clash will click anymore.
Okay, if they’re leaning on,
if they’re leaning on government logos or buzzwords
instead of explaining their program,
in the recent past, we’ve seen a lot of this
around student loans, secret government,
department of education, logos and stuff like that.
And if they can’t explain exactly how this works, Damon,
what should they do?
Well, hopefully you don’t even get to that point
because any ad you see in the mail on digital form, whatever,
anything that has government logo, government this,
trump that, whatever, don’t even wish your time with that.
That’s it.
I don’t want to call it an outright scam at minimum.
They’re misleading you to get you to call.
There’s no government program
that’s going to get rid of your credit card debt.
None, doesn’t exist.
If they offer, you have to act today only.
This is the only chance you’re going to get
through this program.
You should run away.
All right.
But I would ask, what if I want to act tomorrow?
And see what that is.
Yeah, why can’t I talk to a friend?
I act tomorrow?
What?
Can I act tomorrow?
This is Regis Filben here.
I’m here with John.
He’s going for $100,000 in debt relief.
And he thinks you can help.
Well, and here’s the reality is I can’t think
of a single time where the person didn’t act today.
And then I’ve heard you say this.
You’ve told me stories about this.
My favorite thing to say.
Yeah.
And then you go, well, okay, we’ll call him back tomorrow.
See if they’ll say, no, I can’t help you.
Yeah.
So usually what I, in that context, usually is when I’m
talking to a client that goes, you know what?
I signed up for this company, you know, last week
or a month ago, and then I came across your website,
or I heard your podcast, and I realized,
oh, shoot, maybe I shouldn’t have done that.
And then we start talking about the situation.
I realized, yeah, maybe there are some better options.
And I need to take a step back.
And I always tell them, it’s like, look,
when is the first charge, right?
Are they going to charge?
Because once they get your money, it’s hard to get it back.
So if you can, and usually when you sign that contract,
there’s usually a period before they draft
your first payment.
Thankfully, it could be a week, it could be three weeks.
Oh, you know, November 30th, they’re drafting my payment.
Okay, call them up and cancel.
And you know, even if we’re not sure
we’re going to cancel yet, the best thing to do
is just call them up, send a notification,
hey, I’m going to cancel this.
That way you bought yourself some breathing room.
We can figure it all out.
If we get it all figured out, and after we have a strategy,
you still want to hire them?
Very unlikely, but just in case, it’s better to cancel it now
as you keep your money.
Take a breath.
Yeah, a month from now, three weeks from now,
whenever I promise you, if you called that guy back,
gal back and said, you know, I know I didn’t think
this was the right thing, but I’ve thought about it.
And I’ve kind of circled back to it.
I really do want to enroll.
Never once in the history of the world
has a debt relief salesperson gone.
No, I told you.
If you quit us, you can’t ever come back.
They will welcome you with open arms.
Commission back, Christmas is on, right?
Sales is sale.
You don’t have to worry about that.
You can get started anytime you want.
Even if you’ve already started, you need to cancel
to gather your thoughts and make sure
before you make a $100,000 mistake.
And then you can go back to them later
and they will be more than happy to take your money.
I promise.
All right, Damon, here’s the last one I wanted to cover.
I’m the nice one.
The nice one.
Here’s the last one I wanted to cover.
We talked about it briefly before.
But if you ask them for the client agreement in writing
and they won’t give it to you, run.
Yeah, I mean, and a lot of them will.
And then you get the, I call them the turd nuggets.
There’s a lot of turd nuggets in that contract.
But especially the ones that won’t,
then there’s definitely an issue.
Just hang up the phone stop wasting your time.
But the ones that do give you the client agreement,
give me a call, shoot it over to me.
We’ll go through it.
I’ll show you all the turd nuggets.
Ha, ha, ha, ha.
All right, Damon, I think we could have done three shows
that all the notes that I had,
but I think we basically covered it all.
So what is your closing message for this topic?
If Mario shows up on the ad after this,
we’re not endorsing it.
No.
The closing message is,
I don’t want to say 100%,
but I feel like I should say 100%
of all of the ads you see promising debt relief
are going to be leading you to something
that’s not likely a good strategy for your situation.
Including, and I know that’s including
even nonprofit credit counseling.
Yeah, nonprofit doesn’t mean non-revenue.
And I know that sounds completely biased.
It sounds pessimistic,
but after 20 years of seeing the same bullshit.
We’ve seen it all.
Yeah.
It’s just like, well, what do you want from me?
Right?
You see all these ads, just don’t call these,
you call the ads all you want,
gather all the information you want,
but don’t act on any of the stuff
until you 100% feel confident
that you know what you’re getting yourself into.
And if you don’t feel confident
that you know what you’re getting yourself into
based on all those conversations,
I’m only a phone call away.
Go to my website, fill out a request form.
You’ll be on the phone with me.
I’ll have, I’m happy to answer any questions you have.
And you might come away from that call going,
well, Damon’s just full of BS also.
Not likely, but you’ll probably come away with the call going,
oh, I’m glad he pointed out all those turd nuggets.
I didn’t see it in the fine print.
I didn’t realize, oh, that makes a lot more sense.
Now that Damon’s explained it,
I see what they’re doing.
Oh, I’m still okay with that.
Not likely.
Probably you’re gonna say, oh, I’m glad I figured that out
before I signed that contract.
Now I can take a step back
and look at all my other options
that the salesperson didn’t.
There it is.
The secrets, the salespeople don’t want you to know.
Ha, ha, ha, ha.
And you know, the funny thing about this, Damon,
is that over the years that we’ve known each other
in all the writing that I did on GetOut.com to work.
And the number of times that I’ve had an insider write to me
and say, oh my God, you don’t even know the worst of it.
Oh, you, we got those all the time.
See, we get those emails about somebody that worked
at a debt settlement company
and finally got out
because they just couldn’t even sleep at night.
You know, what they were seeing in there.
Because most of these people, they’re good people.
They just get hired.
They’re doing a job.
They’re trying to, they go through the training.
They’re, yeah, they’re told this information.
They don’t have a background,
the salespeople don’t have a background in this stuff.
Honestly, most of them genuinely feel like they’re helping
because they don’t know what’s going on.
They’re not doing any negotiating or anything.
They’re just telling you what they were told to tell you
and how great that program is.
So they genuinely, I think are good people, most of them
and are looking at your situation and going,
oh, how can I help this lady or how can I help this guy?
How can I help this family?
So I don’t think this, you know,
all these nefarious sales people out there
just trying to steal money from you.
But ignorance on fire is still a great thing.
That’s right.
One of the examples I remember is the insider that said
that they could not leave the office
until they’d met their daily quota
and the company provided cuts.
I remember that one.
You can sleep on the cot until you make your,
so imagine somebody in a scenario like that
or even not quite that bad.
They also may have a family, they’ve got bills,
they’ve got rent, you know,
they look, even if they had some background,
they look at your situation and go, oh man, this guy,
he really should be filing bankruptcy.
Our program is not a good program.
It’s just going to cost him $5,000
before he probably eventually goes bankrupt anyway
because he’s not going to be able
to afford these payments forever.
And he’s on a fixed income,
but I’m going to have to sleep on the cot
if I don’t get this guy to say yes.
Or the, I mean, is that the guy you want giving you advice?
Or, or question, you know,
we’ve had people, debt relief people come and say to us,
you guys are idiots.
You don’t know what you’re talking about.
Okay, so let me get this straight.
Your program is going to take, it’s called five years.
It’s not going to be successful with all the creditors
and it’s going to cost the client like 30 grand
and they’re potentially going to get sued along the way.
And you’ve told him that bankruptcy is immoral,
it’s unethical and they shouldn’t do it,
but they’re going to eliminate their debt in 120 days
and it’s going to cost him like two grand.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, and don’t get me wrong,
there are times where settlement can make a lot of sense
and bankruptcy won’t work or whatever,
but the point is the sales guys will never go over that with you.
They will sell every single person that calls on that program
and they will try to make your situation,
your problem fit into their program
rather than reverse engineering it and saying,
okay, what’s the best solution for your problem, right?
So they start out with the wrong premise,
which is, okay, you’re in debt,
you have to get into our program
and that’s the biggest problem
with the entire debt relief industry.
It’s trying to shove your problem
into their makeshift program
rather than designing a strategy for you specifically.
All right, David, until next time, I will see ya.
Peace.