Fidelity Reserve I contacted a debt mangement company, Fidelity Reserves to help with my creditors. I paid them over 300, and now they say I am only entitled to a refund of 33 dollars. Mobile Alabama

You were NOT in a Debt Management Plan (DMP), you were in a Debt Settlement Plan (DSP). The two are VERY different. A DMP makes monthly payments to your creditors, A DSP settles for less than what you actually owe by giving them one big lump sum to pay off the date. You can find a breakdown of the pros and cons for both types of debt consolidation online (Wikipedia for example).

You should never had informed your creditors what you were doing (and I am pretty sure you were advised not to do so if at all possible). Because you called it a DMP they were expecting to get paid a little something every month. Letting them know ahead of time what you are doing before the funds are there does nothing but cause the company to loose any leverage in getting you a good settlement. Think about it from the collector's prospective: If I call up a collection agency that has a $8000 Discover acct and tell them I want to settle for 50% of the debt but cant have the money to them for 8-10 months, they will laugh at me. The golden rule of debt collections is the deeper the discount for YOU the quicker they will want THERE money.

I am sorry you did not fully understand the difference between these two very different types of debt consolidation. You didn't say how long you made the monthly payments or how long your program length was but a 2 year plan is very reasonable for a DSP. A DMP generally takes 5-7 years because you normally have to pay back the full balance of what you owe.

I am currently finishing up the process this customer attempted to begin. I think he must not have fully understood the process. The first $300 is a fee to Fidelity Reserve. Fidelity Reserve assigns an attorney to your case. You pay monthly payments until you have paid the lawyers retainer fees. In my case those were $1600. Then after that they will contact your creditors and negotiate for you. I entered 4 accounts and am now down to 1. At first it does seem that you don't get anything for your money and you wonder why you are paying them but it's all part of the agreement that you make. I had spoken to a couple of other companies before settling on Fidelity Reserve. The other companies wouldn't really give me any information or answer my questions. And I wasn't going to enter into any agreements or contracts without being informed of the process and it's effects on me and my credit. I chose Fidelity Reserve because the information was right on their website and when I spoke with them they answered all questions. Everything was out in the open and so I didn't feel like I was being scammed. The process is slow but once the ball starts rolling the bill collectors stop calling and if I receive something in the mail I fax it to my assigned attorney and they deal with it. The money I paid to the attorney and Fidelity was worth it because they have saved me so far over $5,000. And that doesn't count all of the interest & finance charges I would have paid over the next 30 years making my minimum payments. But anyone interested in doing this process should know up front that it is very hard on your credit until all accounts are settled. It will show on your credit report that you are not making payments. Once the debt is turned over to a credit collection agency that is who the attorney deals with to lower the amount owed.

I am not saying that this individual doesn't have a legitimate complaint, I just wouldn't want anyone to be discouraged from using Fidelity Reserves. Just apparently, you need to be certain that you want to go through the process and that you are willing to finish it before making agreements and payments.

I would discourage any one from using fidelity reserve after the experience I have had with them. I signed my contract online and asked them to forward a copy of the contract to me because I did not have a printer. I never recieved it. Also I was in their program for a year and had to remove myself because my husband lost his job and it all went downhill from there.The amount ot money returned to me was unacceptable. No one explained to me anything about lawyer fees or anything. All I was told that if I wanted to come back to the program I could because I already paid fideity for their services. Services for what? What services came to over 1300.00? I am very disappointed with this company, I just handed over 1300.00 for nothing. I can not come back to their program because I can not make the payments that are requested each month. Fidelity Reserves ripped me off.

This in addition to the rebuttal I offered earlier. The gentleman in an earlier posted rebuttal earlier stated that when you are in the program that you pay monies for attorney's to settle you debts with your creditors. I replied that I was not told of any lawyer fees. How could they negotiate with my creditors when I never sent them the copies of my last statements that I recieved from my creditors? I still have the envelope addressed to Fidelity Reserves with these statements enclosed. I never sent them. After 1 year in the program they did not ask for them. When I spoke with them they did ask who were my creditors and what was the balance on my accounts that's how they came up with the payments that were to be made each month, but I still have these statements. So it seems to me that each client is treated differently.