We are creeping up on nearly two decades of account fee restrictions for nonprofit debt management plan providers. The counseling groups fought hard and heavy in the early 2000s to limit the fees they could charge consumers for budget advice and debt management plans. For example, in 2003, the State of Maryland enacted The Debt … Read more
Morgan Drexen was a large settlement company that at one time was making huge waves in the debt relief world. After regulators took aim at the company, things fell apart. There is a huge archive of previous posts I’ve written that involved Morgan Drexen. Frankly, I thought Morgan Drexen was now out of my life … Read more
Yesterday I wrote a post about a Provident Solutions consumer contract for debt relief services. I heard from an expert attorney that the section of the contract that penalized the consumer for unfavorable reporting or reviews violated the Consumer Review Fairness Act. I am not an attorney so I can’t give anyone a legal opinion … Read more
A tipster (send in your tips here) sent me a copy of a Provident Services client agreement for debt elimination. According to the Provident Solutions website, the company is “a Document Preparation company.” – Source The document I received is below. Below I’ll pull out some sections of the client contract and give you my … Read more
Recent news about Google changing its policy to attempt to block debt relief companies other than non-profit credit counseling has created a false party. While some in the credit counseling world look at this new move as a way to reduce advertising competition and harm alternative forms of debt relief, that would be incorrect. I’ve … Read more
A reader sent me a mailer they allegedly received from Titan Consulting Group. The mailer listed a website for the company at titanconsultinggrp.com. That website says the company is located at 1412 Broadway, 15th Floor, New York, NY. The State of New York says there is no company registered to do business under the name … Read more
A debt relief company named Debts Resolved just put out a very odd press release. Parts of the release didn’t make any sense to me and I was surprised the release used titles of people like the CEO and Assistant to the CEO but gave no names. The press release says the company is located … Read more
Finally. I can’t believe it has taken so long for a credit counseling group to make the leap to include a savings component to a debt reduction approach. Historically credit counseling groups directed every possible dollar they could towards creditor payments to make the creditors happy. And it is one thing to include a savings … Read more
Consumer Education Services Inc. (CESI) announced today that CEO Michael Croxson will be a speaker covering Financial Inclusion at the upcoming LendIt Fintech USA 2018 conference April 9-11 in San Francisco. The LendIt Fintech conference is the world’s leading event in financial services innovation, and features more than 5,000 attendees, 1,000 investors, 600 banks and … Read more
At one time Damian Kutzner was living the debt relief high life. He had participated or even concocted the mass joinder mortgage elimination scheme at the height of the real estate meltdown. A large number of good people believed the sales hype. The end result was a couple of attorneys who are suspended, a couple … Read more
I received the following email which, if accurate, would support the concerns over some companies sending out consolidation loan offers only to switch them into debt settlement programs. Tipster says: “I worked for [ ] company for a few months and quit because I could not sell how they wanted me to. I have worked … Read more
Not that long ago I wrote The Future of Debt Relief is Artificial Intelligence and Job Loss and talked about future changes in the debt relief space. Today we have some feedback from Mike Morency of Peregrin Services who actually holds patents in the field of debt relief processes and artificial intelligence (AI) processing. Mike’s … Read more
It’s been more than 10 years since I had the first conversation about automating processes in the debt relief industry and while artificial intelligence (AI) has not made the magical inroads that has always been promised, it’s coming. If you subtract out the telemarketers from the debt relief process what you are left with is … Read more
I was asked recently what I thought of the product Liberty Aid was promoting. So I turned to Michael Bovee for his opinion. Here is Michael had to say. Back when I first started out in the debt relief industry, there were books, and fringe websites circulating about how “federal reserve notes aren’t money”, or … Read more
I’m not even going to pretend to know what it is like on the front lines of a legal practice in America. I’m not an attorney. But it must be tough because good attorneys keep falling for the rope-a-dope pitch from some debt relief companies to put their law license on the line. Vito Torchia, … Read more