CCCS, Consumer Credit Counseling Services, Consolidated Credit Counseling Services Inc RIPOFF Utter THIEVES! I sent my monthly payments on time and my money was never disbursed to my creditors! Fort Lauderdale Florida

We have researched the claims made by this individual and regret that she was not satisfied with our services. However, after assisting over 100,000 individuals, during over ten years of service, our organization has never had an unresolved complaint. Consolidated is the sixth largest credit counseling agency in the country and after only recently learning of this one and only report on our company, we are posting the following facts regarding our position on this matter.

First, Linda describes receiving late fees. Linda joined our service in late October of 2000 with delinquent credit card and medical debts totaling close to $4,000. Her first payment through our program was due on December 5, 2000; however, she made no payment until the following month. As a result, Linda did continue to get late fees from her creditors, which began long before she joined our service. Then, Linda dropped our program before giving it the required time necessary to bring her past-due accounts current. Simply put, the late fees Linda received were a result of her poor payment history.

Second, Linda describes a $10 payment for benefits. The benefits to which she refers were actually $5 and clearly described as optional with no requirement to pay. Linda called and requested the $5 payment be discontinued shortly after making her second payment to our program in March of 2001. Her request was immediately honored and the extra $5 in her account was sent to her credit card company.

Third, Linda describes inconsistent payments. It is true that we were required to increase Linda’s payment for one of her medical bills. This was a result of her creditor calling our office and stating that they would not accept a payment lower than $25. Which is the exact amount that our organization disbursed to her creditor following their request.

Finally, Linda describes undisbursed funds. In fact, Linda actually sent our organization a total of $758.00. Every penny of which was disbursed according to commonly accepted industry practices and the terms of our agreement. There is not one cent unaccounted for.

Linda may contact our client service department toll-free 1-877-201-7780 to receive the written documentation of the facts as stated.

We realize that managing delinquent debt is a stressful situation for our clients and do the best we can to make it an easy process. However, in order to be successful we do need our clients’ full cooperation and patience.

Further, I respectfully request that Linda’s colorfully written but groundless report regarding our company be removed and/or disregarded as based purely on emotion with literally no factual basis. It would be a disgrace for these misstatements to tarnish an otherwise excellent reputation.

About a year ago, when I realized that my monthly budget didn't allow for making full payments to my credit cards. Note that I wasn't in default yet with any of them. I tried contacting them directly about hardship programs - I was denied. So I contacted  Consolidated Credit and got on a debt management program. From the very beginning I wasn't fully satisfied because they weren't able to lower down my payments - they only decreased interest rates. But I wanted to give it a try anyway. As I feared, I wasn't able to keep up the high payments and one by one, each creditor notified me that I was removed from the program. Since then I fell more behind on my payments and became default on all of those cards. It just happens that once I became default, creditors started offering me good deals, like, 0% interest for a year, cutting minimum payment in half etc. Why couldn't Consolidated Credit get me that? It's a shame that my credit had to get ruined to get to this point but it looks like that's the  best way to get on the hardship program directly from creditors.

Sorry Consolidated Credit, but you're not good enough!

As to the lady complaining about them in the first post - Consolidated Credit makes it very clear that you must make payments on time and in full and that it would take about 3 months for the late fees to stop. I fell out of that program because I couldn't pay on time or in full and I don't blame them for it. They did what they said they would do and their fees are pretty low so it's doable if you are able to afford those payments. If you can't, I'll say don't bother.