Law Offices Of Roni Lynn Deutch Questionable Ethics North Highlands, California

After 4 1/2 months and $1400 I still have a levee on my wages. I filed returns to be current and then sent them the first set of forms. After several weeks I am set a packet of papers asking how I wanted to proceed.

They gave me 3 or 4 options including an Offer In Compromise. They said based on the info I had presented that I had a positive cash flow of +$66 a month and the lowest the IRS would accept was $3980. Since my actual income was a good bit less than the projected income they used to come up with the +$66 I called in and asked them to recalculate.

I spent a hour on the phone talking to James Owens. When we ended the call I thought we had be successfully recalculated my monthly income to show a slightly negative monthly cash flow. Which btw was accurate. 2009 was a very bad year for the Limo company I worked for and the last quarter was extremely bad.

Boy was I surprised when a few weeks later I received a second packet the same as the first except this time instead of a +$66 cash flow this time it showed +$357 for a Offer in Compromise of $21440. 

I was dumb founded. I spent all that time on the phone explaining how I did not have any positive cash flow. And they turned around and recalculated my expenses  to some how come up with a much greater Positive cash flow. Either these people are idiots or this was done as a stall, to draw out the process and collect more fees. 

If my income had been more than the $700 a month the IRS allows you to keep I think I would have driven to Sacramento and choked someone. I was so mad. This happened over Dec.09 thru early Jan. 10. 

Over the last 5 months I have paid them over $1400 and they accomplished absolutely nothing. I have been out of work since mid January. When I informed The Law offices of Ronni Lynn Duetch that I was unable to make my March 13th payment they quickly turned on me, telling my they would be dropping me as a client. I informed them that for the next few days I was still their client and asked to speak with Kelly Mieske the attorney assigned to my case.

To my surprise she actually returned my call within 3 hours but all she did was give me a song and dance. I was requesting that they allow me 60 days to get back on my feet and continue my payments, I told them that I would not expect them to do any work on my case until I had resumed payments. Again I was told that if I did not make my payment that is due 3/13/10 that they would no longer represent me. 

Ms. Mieske had the nerve to tell me that if they were to do as I requested It would have a financial impact on there company so great that they would no longer be able to offer a payment plan to future clients. In fairness I believe she meant that if they were to offer a period of time to resume payments as a company policy it would have that impact on there company. Even if that was the case can someone please explain to me the cost of having an open but inactive case.

Then I realized that once they drop me I will at some point need to hire someone else. At this point it dawned on me that these companies feed off each others victims. I won't be rehiring Ronni Duetch, but I am sure there are people that have dumped by R. Duetch and hired JK Harris or TaxMasters. Talk about going from "Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fire."  

The unfortunate truth is that while despicable I don't believe they broke any laws, or contractual agreements, in how they treated me. These people, Law offices of Ronni Lynn Duetch, have hurt me at a time when I was most vulnerable. They target people when they are their weakest. We need to stand up to them, even if it is only some bad press we cant take this lying down. Thank you for your help.