by Tracy Morrison

Created on: May 12, 2010

After having been in the collections field for more than 25 years, I have seen thousands of companies come and go in the realm of debt negotiation. After certain law changes in the last 10 years, many fly by night operations have opened up, promising miraculous and sometimes unbelievable promises of debt reduction and elimination.

If you have dealt with any amount of debt load, you know that companies that have extended you credit or handed you cash money in a loan, that its highly doubtful they going to simply agree to back off of the balance you owe and stop charging the contractual fees and interest you agreed to pay in the contract. Often times I have had a debt negotiator call me in an attempt to bully me into accepting pennies on the dollar of what the person actually owed in the first place. Most of these people are commissioned workers that are paid a minimum of $7.25 and hour to call you and act nasty to see if they can get you to get the creditor to take less so they can earn a commission.

I have seen cases where some people have paid these negotiators more than $2800.00 to call their creditors! Something the debtor could have done themselves. That $2800.00 could have helped settle one of more debts. I have read stories where some have paid these services and the company does nothing and it eventually runs the person into bankruptcy. The FTC has made great strides in the last several years in shutting down these disreputable shysters.

Few of these debt companies are truly legitimate or working hard for YOU. The only legitimate credit counseling outfit I have ever dealt with is CCCS or Consumer Credit Counseling Service. They are one of the major approved debtor credit counseling entities for debtors working towards the option of bankruptcy. CCCS is non profit organization and charges a low monthly maintenance fee of around $25.00 a month to call and barter with your creditors to hopefully get you on the road to debt recovery.

There are many companies popping up in the US that are calling themselves CHRISTIAN Credit Counseling Services. Before you give ANY company your money to negotiate your debts down, GOOGLE their name and read what others say. You will be quite surprised to find that MOST of these so called debt negotiators are simply money sharks and may end up costing you thousands of dollars that could have been paid on your debts!

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