Family Credit Counseling Lost a money order back in october for 600.00 and debited my bank account twice in one week will not put funds back will not return phone calls Ripoff Lauderdale Lakes Florida

If you feel you've been ripped off by Family Credit Counseling Corp, PLEASE contact the Florida Attorney General's Office. They are DEFINITELY investigating these people and would be happy to take your statement. Their phone # for FL residents is 954-712-4600, for non-Fl residents it's 850-414-3990, and their web site is www.myfloridalegal.com.

It is really sad to see how this company has hurt so many people.I was an employee for several years and I saw alot of the complaints against the company.Although I was a supervisor before I resigned, I did my best to be honest with people,even telling them they needed to find another service or offer suggestions on how to fix their credit themselves. I didn't agree with the way the company was ran.

For one, the employees work under a lot of pressure. The owner James is a selfish man that doesn't care about anyone. He walks around cursing the employees out,forcing them to attend his holiday parties or their fired, forcing them to do 12 hour shifts 6-7 days a week,He even sets the employees up that he wants to fire by having others spy on their conversations,emails etc to see what he can get on them. He lost his attorney when he saw that the company was going down.He has become desperate for business and now has whoever will lie for him there.

The payroll dept has new people now but when I was there. The bankdrafts were either late or two early. Double pulls became an every day thing and late payments to creditors was nothing new. The company holds the payments for as long as they want to before releasing it to the creditors.Terrible business! The owner has fired every employee that dared to question his authority or refuse to do the wrong thing.

I resigned after I saw it was not getting better and my job was on the line for being honest about how it was going.

If you want to get to him. You may have to make a personal visit to the office and deal with him or Alex face to face. They are cowards really! But calling over and over will only get you on hold forever!Many of the new employees don't know what is going on. He pays them $14 and up to do what they are doing so tell them when you get the chance the dangers they are in staying in the company. If they have honesty and integrity they will leave and spread the word so that people will stop working there and he will be forced to close.

I became a customer of FCCC in Mar 2004. I was charged via bank debit for a set-up fee and now they don't charge set up fees? Was given explicit instructions to make sure money for withdrwal was available on the 15th of every month, where at that time FCCC would "automaticly withdraw" their monthly charge to pay my creditors. The monthly fee was never taken and after 2 months my creditors told me that there was no agreement with FCCC for them to make payment on my behalf. I repeatedly asked for my $199.00 to be refunded because they have not performed any services but never received any phone calls back. Every month I have called and left a message since May 2004. I received a phone call today from FCCC telling me "I can continue to keep calling for another 2 years but I won't get it back." Everybody plaese file a complaint with the FTC!

I was also a client to FCCC and at first everything was going well. I would send in my payments and all my creditors were getting paid. I never signed up for the automatic withdrawal system because I'll rather send in the money order than have them take it directly out of my checking account. I can admit I missed a payment or maybe sent a couple in late. During October 2005 I recieved a letter like everyone else about Hurricane Wilma and how they were affected. They told me to call in to talk to someone about me account. I tried calling in numerous times and all I would get was nothing and a voice mail. I left messages for someone to call me but no one did. I kept calling there after for the next couple of months but I would never get anyone. I stopped sending in payments after the last letter they sent because I did not trust where the money was going. I never recieved a call or letter from them since October of 2005. I know my story is not as bad as the rest but it could have been worst had I not stop sending in payments. I refused to send in money until I spoke to someone and since I never got a physical person on the phone I assumed they were out of business. I hope you guys are able to get a lawsuit against these people because they seem to not be good company. ****To note...the comment made by the president himself to me was very unprofessional. If I was running a company I would never leave a comment like that on a message board especially with a clients information in it. There was no need for him to go into so much detail about the situation you were having with their company. I hope you guys get that lawsuit and I'm glad that I stopped doing business with that company.

I to have talked to several nice people at FCCC and were told the same things as you. I was watching my accounts like a hawk. And no one could get the payment amounts correct and/or they were late or some creditors received two payments in a month and others nothing. I couldn't stand all the stress. Not once did I have a late payment until FCCC. So I finally apted out of the program. I'll take care of it on my own. I just couldn't stand all the excuses and lies anymore. I made sure the money was coming out of my account BUT they didn't make sure anything was getting paid correctly or on time. I would call every week to check on everything. It was never right once. Then I would tell them what to fix and the next time call and it wasn't correct. This went on since September. And they charged over charged me twice for the monthly fee. I am still waiting for that and a stop payment fee since they took out money from my account and shouldn't have. So all I have to say is don't get too excited. I do hope it works out for you. Good Luck!!

Finally this company has someone that reponds to emails and gives a callbacks with updates on my accounts. FCCC for the past 6 months has been giving me the run around and making so many mistakes to my accounts, that when i call nobody in their company could give me a straight answer and always said that they will call me back and never do. I got an email from FCCC and a guy name jean frezin said that he received my BBB complaint and wanted me to call FCCC and he would help resolve my problems, at first I thought it was a joke from FCCC because after faxing and emailing them for months I just gave up so i called FCCC and spoke with jean and he tells me that he got my BBB complaint and wants to help me resolved my problems. I asked him why is he emailing me after i filed the BBB complaint a month ago and the first thing that came out his mouth was an apology which just through me off because the employees at FCCC was always rude when I called. I explained to jean that my creditors were paid late and some didnt even receive payments and my interates were jack up. Jean told me he will contact all my creditors and conference the calls, he explained to each creditor that it wasnt my fault that payments were late or didnt get received and that he will send hurricane letters to explain why payments were not being made on time and HE GOT CREDITORS TO REMOVE LATE FEES AND FINANCE CHARGES. I decided to stay with FCCC because of jean because out of those 6 months I been with this company he's the only one that gave a d**n about these problems this company caused. IF anybody wants something done or get a response call jean frezin his #1-866-464-0112

Just a quick update. My attorney sent Mr.Armstrong a letter stating that he had fourteen days to respond and/or refund my money or further action will be taken. It has been well over that time frame and what a surprise.....no response...nothing at all from this freakin' moron. Now my lawyer will be drawing up another letter to send off to them warning them of the next steps that will be taken which to be honest with you, I am not sure what that constitutes.

My lawyer recommended very strongly that I file a complaint with the federal trade commission. He said they investigate all claims and they look for patterns of complaints as well. He also urged me to come on this site and recommend everyone else do the same. Some of you have already done so, if i remember correctly. You can do it via their website. FTC.gov This is such bullshit. I am getting angrier and angrier everyday that goes by and I really cannot believe that nothing is being done and no one is willing to help.

What do we do now and where do we go from here? 41 complaints now just on this site alone and hundreds and hundreds on the BBB which is USELESS by the way. The BBB cares nothing about consumers and protecting the public from fraudulent, unethical ,deceptive businesses. I have never even heard back from them after the third time i rejected fccc's claim that they were dealing with me directly. Don't waste your time with the BBB they are useless. Everyone please, if you haven't already filed a complaint with the FTC, please do so now. It only takes a few minutes. I'll keep you updated as to what, if anything, happens next.

Just a quick update. My attorney sent Mr.Armstrong a letter stating that he had fourteen days to respond and/or refund my money or further action will be taken. It has been well over that time frame and what a surprise.....no response...nothing at all from this freakin' moron. Now my lawyer will be drawing up another letter to send off to them warning them of the next steps that will be taken which to be honest with you, I am not sure what that constitutes.

My lawyer recommended very strongly that I file a complaint with the federal trade commission. He said they investigate all claims and they look for patterns of complaints as well. He also urged me to come on this site and recommend everyone else do the same. Some of you have already done so, if i remember correctly. You can do it via their website. FTC.gov This is such bullshit. I am getting angrier and angrier everyday that goes by and I really cannot believe that nothing is being done and no one is willing to help.

What do we do now and where do we go from here? 41 complaints now just on this site alone and hundreds and hundreds on the BBB which is USELESS by the way. The BBB cares nothing about consumers and protecting the public from fraudulent, unethical ,deceptive businesses. I have never even heard back from them after the third time i rejected fccc's claim that they were dealing with me directly. Don't waste your time with the BBB they are useless. Everyone please, if you haven't already filed a complaint with the FTC, please do so now. It only takes a few minutes. I'll keep you updated as to what, if anything, happens next.

Just a quick update. My attorney sent Mr.Armstrong a letter stating that he had fourteen days to respond and/or refund my money or further action will be taken. It has been well over that time frame and what a surprise.....no response...nothing at all from this freakin' moron. Now my lawyer will be drawing up another letter to send off to them warning them of the next steps that will be taken which to be honest with you, I am not sure what that constitutes.

My lawyer recommended very strongly that I file a complaint with the federal trade commission. He said they investigate all claims and they look for patterns of complaints as well. He also urged me to come on this site and recommend everyone else do the same. Some of you have already done so, if i remember correctly. You can do it via their website. FTC.gov This is such bullshit. I am getting angrier and angrier everyday that goes by and I really cannot believe that nothing is being done and no one is willing to help.

What do we do now and where do we go from here? 41 complaints now just on this site alone and hundreds and hundreds on the BBB which is USELESS by the way. The BBB cares nothing about consumers and protecting the public from fraudulent, unethical ,deceptive businesses. I have never even heard back from them after the third time i rejected fccc's claim that they were dealing with me directly. Don't waste your time with the BBB they are useless. Everyone please, if you haven't already filed a complaint with the FTC, please do so now. It only takes a few minutes. I'll keep you updated as to what, if anything, happens next.

Just a quick update. My attorney sent Mr.Armstrong a letter stating that he had fourteen days to respond and/or refund my money or further action will be taken. It has been well over that time frame and what a surprise.....no response...nothing at all from this freakin' moron. Now my lawyer will be drawing up another letter to send off to them warning them of the next steps that will be taken which to be honest with you, I am not sure what that constitutes.

My lawyer recommended very strongly that I file a complaint with the federal trade commission. He said they investigate all claims and they look for patterns of complaints as well. He also urged me to come on this site and recommend everyone else do the same. Some of you have already done so, if i remember correctly. You can do it via their website. FTC.gov This is such bullshit. I am getting angrier and angrier everyday that goes by and I really cannot believe that nothing is being done and no one is willing to help.

What do we do now and where do we go from here? 41 complaints now just on this site alone and hundreds and hundreds on the BBB which is USELESS by the way. The BBB cares nothing about consumers and protecting the public from fraudulent, unethical ,deceptive businesses. I have never even heard back from them after the third time i rejected fccc's claim that they were dealing with me directly. Don't waste your time with the BBB they are useless. Everyone please, if you haven't already filed a complaint with the FTC, please do so now. It only takes a few minutes. I'll keep you updated as to what, if anything, happens next.

Continuing with my post previously, I wasn't getting any response to my voice mails to Brandon at American Debt Freedom (ADF), so I sent him an e-mail and explained that we decided not to proceed any further with ADF and FCCC. I explained the reasons for each company and signed off. However, I didn't hear anything for a day, so I called him again and he answered immediately. So I asked if he received my e-mail and he responded with "Did I receive his e-mail?", which I hadn't yet checked my e-mail that day, so he began his speech. I cut him short because he only addressed my few concerns with "his" company and not a word about FCCC. He tried to belittle me and make me feel as if I was making a big mistake backing out and having high compounded daily interest rates... it doesn't sound very smart! I replied with "well, my husband and I are going to make our own payments and if it's a mistake, oh well, that's our decision!" He then made some smart remark under his breath and asked me to read his e-mail; I did. The e-mail "before" our conversation was still trying to sell me, told me that the BBB has no legal authority, and is nothing but a domestic rating company. Said Dunn and Brad Street is what I should use to make my decisions, if any. The NFCC also has no authority and acts as a "referral" agency which may refer you to another referral company. Then... referring to his company, ADF, he blames customer complaints due to customer error! It's for this reason as to why he recommends you write clear on the CIF form. There was NO MENTION OF FCCC!! The 2nd e-mail "after" our conversation... he tells me he is a concerned individual, explains what I already know (my rates, payments, aprs,etc.) and that I will get absolutely no where!!!!! His next line read exactly like this... IS THIS GETTING THROUGH TO YOU? Next line exactly... The quote in yellow and blue explains its self! (Don't these people know proper spelling and grammar??) (NO LOAN, SELF PAY, or ANY OTHER PROGRAM TYPE CAN DO THIS. A little further down, here's the kicker... "Your doubts on FCCC means nothing, seeing that the problem(s) if any occur on the client end. We ask that you provide accurate information so that no problems occur." Last paragraph in bold... "To point out one more thing, if you go through us or another company - you will end up at the same spot. All front-end agencies use the same processing center. Please confirm." I politely responded with "Your concern is appreciated; however, I will not debate the information you have provided below. It remains our standing NOT to proceed any further and close out our file. Thank you." Received a reply 1 hour later (all in bold letters)..."Sometimes people just can't understand what is right. Terms of Cancellation have been mailed. Brandon" Sooo... I'll bet the Terms of Cancellation is going to be the $99 or some sort of fee, but I did not "AGREE" to the fee, I only listened and "acknowledged" what was said. I told him that I wanted to discuss this with my husband first and he told me that once I hang up constitutes a "Verbal Agreement". If by any chance our conversation was taped by them, that's illegal unless I'm told prior - correct? Otherwise, wouldn't my signature constitute a legal, binding contract vs. verbal? Can someone give me some insight on these questions, please?? I'd appreciate it, and I'll let you know what the paperwork is when I receive it in the mail.

Thanks you guys for sharing your experiences and I am really glad that our experiences can save someone else from having to go through this nightmare. The truth is that these so called credit counseling/debt management companies, (and I'm convinced almost ALL of them) really don't have our best interest at heart. People feel desperate because they are in such a mess financially and these companies prey on that. I am sure some people have been helped but I've been jaded for sure. I am just attempting to work with my creditors on my own. All I can do is what I can do. My attorney sent a letter to Mr. Armstrong, the president of the company, and the moron who wrote the rebuttal riddled with grammatical errors and spelling mistakes , so I am waiting to hear back. He has fourteen days to respond and then we will take the next course of action. I am just asking for my money back from them. The money that was never sent to my creditors and the creditors were never even notified of the program. I find that interesting because despite that, those same creditors were listed on the monthly statement that fccc sent to me each month and reflected on these statements were balances that were DECREASING when in actuality they were all increasing due to late fees , finance charges and failure to pay. whatever, I am so tired of all of this I just want ALL of my money back to me including the "contribution" fees that I gave them. I really do wish that a class action suit would be brought up against them so that we all could get some compensation for ruined credit, dramatically increased balances and a lot of frustration and heartache. I'll update again soon in case anyone is curious IF MR. Armstrong will even respond to my attorneys letter. We will see.

I am, or was, in the process of joining with American Debt Freedom, who I found out, is a "front" company for FCCC. My previous employment of 5.5 yrs. was working with contracts and warranty statements, so I do understand a lot of the legal jargon as a layman. Yes, Brandon, who I believe is the owner of ADF, was so nice, polite, and helpful after I had sent an e-mail asking for help. He called me and asked information of which I had ready for him, and then called me back with all the information of what our payments per month would be as well as the $35.00 fee per month that was already figured in our payment. He asked what date I wanted to begin the "Program"; I replied that I wanted to discuss this with my husband before signing on.

He did NOT give me that opportunity... said that once we hung up, it was automatically in effect. So I made an executive decision and let him send us the paperwork; as far as I'm concerned, if my signature is not on there, it's not legal. When I received the paperwork, I began reading page after page and suddenly realized that some pages had another party's name on it... FCCC. Up until that point, I was NEVER TOLD about a third-party being involved. I was lead to believe that ADF was going to be handling everything. So I decided to do a search at www.askjeeves.com and said "Tell me about the company FCCC" and that's is how I came to this Web site!!!

I have been reading for hours all the horror stories you poor people have been through... I am so sorry for you! I remembered that on ADF's Web site, they had the BBB Logo at the bottom of the page, so I did a search to see what their rating was and found them in there, but it stated that this company was NOT a member of the Better Business Bureau. Also, their credit rating was a "D" meaning "We have enough concerns about this company (for example, their offer, customer complaints, advertising, etc.) that we recommend caution in doing business with it." This made me even more curious, so I checked with the NFCC on FCCC and ADF to find that neither one is a certified agency! I then found contradictory statements in ADF's cover page... 1. Your enrollment became effective upon your Verbal Authorization (which I never gave, I only acknowledged what he told me). 2. Once you've made your initial payment, we will prepare a Personal Financial Analysis for you and "finish" the enrollment process.

And,if I back out before the program begins, I will have to pay $90.00. So I've already closed the account that they would have had access to, notified every credit card that they had information about and told them that I DO NOT authorize any charge from ADF or FCCC. I've now been trying repeatedly to reach Brandon to tell him we have decided not to proceed with this, but he's not returning my calls, so I guess an e-mail will get his attention. The main thing was that I compared the contracts between the two and they didn't mention separate fees for each company. For anyone reading these stories for the first time, read your contracts thoroughly, watch everything you say to someone, if you don't feel comfortable giving out information (that gut feeling is ALWAYS right), then DON'T, and do your research before anything else.

When Brandon wouldn't let me discuss this with my husband, I should have known then and said I wasn't interested, thank you and good-bye! Thank you to all of you for sharing your experiences because you prevented us from making a huge mistake. And if I was losing the amounts of money all of you are, I'd seek at least a free consultation with an attorney or more; you just might find one who will take this on as a class-action suit for all of you and not charge the initiating person... I would think they would take their fee out of the money from FCCC. Isn't it worth a try? Good luck and God help all of you!

Below is the complaint I filed with the AG for Florida and California (was not sure which one to file with so I sent it to both) I also filed with the Consumer Services Department and I sent a separate complaint to BBB. I know I have no issues of them not paying my creditors but I believe thats because I didn't let it get to that, they forced me to make a decision due to there stupidity and for that I don't get my money back, ummmm no don't think so.

I signed up with the FCCC back in Aug. of 2003, they were to consolidate my husband's dept., and mine lower our interest rates if possible and take $530 dollar payments out of my account on the 15th of every month. A few times they pulled money out of my account to early and caused my account to over with draw which then the bank charged me a $23 dollar fee, the most recent time they did this was back in January 06 and I still have not recovered that fee. Although this was a problem that I had with this company along with the way they treat me as a customer, making promises that they would not hold too, never returning phone calls, these do not add up to the reason I am writing this today. As I stated before this company was to withdraw money out of my account every month on the 15th, for the month of February they failed to pull money out of my account which could have caused my bills to be late if I was not to pay them myself. My husband and I have good credit and have NEVER been late on a payment. I did give this company a fair chance to correct their error before I felt I needed to take over my accounts. I gave the company until the 20th to take the money out of my account until I would then call and bring this to their attention. Of course the 20th came around and the $530 dollars was still in my account, I called FCCC and spoke with Jessica who told me that there was a glitch with there system and everyone who was to have money pulled on the 15th there pull would be delayed but all of my creditors have been notified that my bills would be late, she said she set a manual pull for the 21st and the money would be taken out of my account to pay the creditors. I called my bank the morning of the 21st and the money was still in there. I called FCCC back and spoke with Jessica again letting her know the money had not been pulled, she stated that the money would be taken out after 1:00 that day, so I waited to check my account until the 22nd and still the money was in my account. I called back on the 22nd and spoke this time with Denise, she again reassured me that all of my creditors had been notified and she would speak with someone regarding the money not being pulled from my account. In the mean time I decided to take it upon myself to contact my creditors to make sure they were aware of the situation, each one denied ever being contacted by the FCCC and there were no notes in the system of having ever been contacted. I then called the FCCC back and spoke with Latoya who looked up my account and said there was a pull set for the 24th, mind you this money was to be pulled on the 15th and it does take a few days after that to reach my creditor and being not one of them were contacted regarding this issue I could not take the chance of my credit being ruined. I had enough and wanted to speak with a supervisor, after getting the run around about how they all were in a meeting or they all left already I finally got a hold of Carmen (supervisor) who told me that their employee who set a manual pull from my account was not supposed to do that so I they would be pulling $530 dollars out of my account twice but they would put one transaction of $530 dollars back in right away and that if I did not have a total of $1060 dollars to cover it I would have to make a claim with there company to get the over draft fee that my bank would charge me back. I was still trying to get the fee that my bank charged me for them pulling to early the month before so I decided that I was going to close my bank account so they could not take money out anymore and pay off my creditors by myself. It states in there contract that if I was to pay my creditors by myself that they will not give me my deposit back but being that they did not hold true to there contract with me I deserve at least the deposit back and the overdraft fee that my bank charged me due to there error. I have been battling with this company from day one and if you go to www.ripoffreport.com you will clearly see that I am not the only one. They blame allot of what has happened on the hurricanes but this has nothing to do with that, they can only blame themselves. I actually had no problems with them at the time of the hurricanes and consider myself luck because they really screwed up a lot of peoples credit. I am asking for MY money back, also another issue here is that they are a non-profit org. but they take $30 dollars out of my payment every month for who knows what and now they are screwing peoples credit up so the clients will eventually take there accounts over themselves and the FCCC gets to pocket the deposits. I truly believe this is a scam and I need help to get MY money back that they owe me. The bottom line is they lied to me about when they were going to take money out of my account, they lied about contacting my creditors, they broke there contract with me on several occasions regarding pulling money out of my accounts rather it be too soon or too late and I could not trust that if they did ruin my credit that they would repair it. There for they scarred me into taking over my accounts. I was planning on paying off all my accounts in March but again I could not trust that they would take the money out and it would be distributed properly, as of now all of my accounts are paid off.

It's great you found free consumer resources and more need to do the same. Please show them Mr. Armstrong's own "defense." Particularly, the major problem seemed to be the confusion about December's payment. In Mr. Armstrong's own words (and he is carefully reviewing the notes on your account as he wrote the post late on a Sunday night...) he said you sent in your ACH form to begin pulls in December. It was received, processed and the first pull took place 12/16 and cleared 12/20. Yet, further down, one of his "senior counselors" advised you to authorize a manual to cover the missed December payment. If the counselor you spoke with on 12/15 saw the ach was activated in time for a pull the following day (12/16), why suggest you make up a missed payment for that month? THere was no missed payment, as his own words confirm. They pulled 12/16 for December, why does he keep emphasizing a make up payment for December that you authorized? Then he goes on to blame a new, unqualified person who is apparently taking calls and giving out false information and takes blame for an "internal error" (kind of vague, error by whom?). It might also be worth noting some things about your missing money order. CDME does enrollment and receives only the very first payment from clients. Any payments they receive after that are meant for FCCC. If you did send it to CDME's offices (you would not be the first) they should have realized that they received a money order for a client who was already enrolled and, JUST MAYBE, the money order was meant for FCCC and forward it to FCCC. Even if this very likely possibility did not enter the thought process of the person who opened it and recorded it, your repeated calls about it benig missing might have lit a light bulb in someone's head that it was sent when they were in Charlotte and, QUITE POSSIBLY, it is there. He seems to make a case how they searched absolutely everywhere and it was your fault where you sent it. The burden of proof was on you when it took one person in Charlotte to deposit a money order that did not belong to them and nobody at FCCC to even think the missing money order could be in Charlotte. It is a good thing, as Mr Armtstrong says, that they have "officers in common" and a "close working relationship." In fact, he is the president of both companies...

Yes, I am sure a lot of people in debt management programs may feel that they can not in fact afford a lawyer, but there are a lot of consumer advocates out there who have lawyers who will work with you pro-bono to help you get your money back. Also, according to Florida's laws, if a company such as this is using unethical, deceptive practices and a suit is brought up against them, in the end they will be responsible for paying any legal fees you, the victim, have incurred. I am fortunate in that area because my father is an attorney and has a lot of friends in high places that were and are willing to help me. Because of this I was able to get an attorney to help us for free. For that, I am truly thankful for. I received personally, a letter from fccc's lawyer informing me that my allegations and complaints will now be dealt with by him and his firm and that all of my emails i sent to Mr. Garner have been forwarded to him for review. They also sent me back a check for the money order that was lost by them for the full amount. It is about freakin' time since I have been trying to get back that lost, needed money since November. What is left now is the money that they took from me that was never sent to my creditors and all of the late fees that have accrued on my accounts due to them not paying. I will be fighting to get that back as well. My attorney will be contacting their attorney shortly. I have my bank statements sitting right here and I have letters from creditors who were never even contacted by fccc and who have not received any of the money i have paid fccc. It blows my mind that they can deny all of these facts when i am the one with the proof. It is crazy to me. I received a letter back form the AG in Florida and they said that action will be taken only when they see a pattern of complaints on a certain company as they do not deal with individual claims against a company. I can't stress enough for people to file a complaint with the AG's office in Florida so they will see a pattern and can take action against them. So everyone who is reading this and has been taken for a ride by this company, please get on the attorney general's website and file a complaint. If they see the pattern they will help. Also file a complaint through the Florida Division of Consumer Services because i did and they sent me a response back telling me they will be in touch soon and a copy of my complaint was sent to fccc. They advocate for individual consumers where the attorney general deals with multiple complaints on an individual company. Just be proactive everyone because there really are a lot of resources and a lot of help for us out there but we just have to utilize them. The internet is a powerful tool in this area. I'll keep updating as this saga continues. Someone really should inform Mr. Armstrong about a little something called "spell check." He can't spell and use proper punctuation and he certainly can't add or subtract. Did he even finish elementary school? Oh well.

After reading all the posts regarding the infamous FCCC it is nice to see you consumers noticing the outright lies and lack of respect they have for their customers. As "Barb" pointed out, James Armstrong's response is riddled with spelling and punctuation errors and goes to show you what type of mind is running this organization. This is not the first time he has attempted to respond personally to a justifiably irate client. Another post on this site now has his attorney responding for him. FCCC has previously sent a letter to "reassure" clients that things "are expected to be" up and running 100% as of November 21, 20005. Oddly enough, James Armstrong dated the letter November 22nd! On the 22nd, one might know if they had met their goals the previous day. It is also interesting to note that Mr. Garner only recently joined the company and, of course, he wants to make a good impression for his new boss. As stated, there are only a handful of original employees there. Did anyone notice that the letter from FCCC's attorney on another post stated that the director left for personal reasons? Yet he is still listed on FCCC's BBB page along with another ex-employee. THere is no mention of Mr Garner on the BBB page either. I agree with all of the information revealed by the employees and ex-employees about FCCC, except for those of the CEO. To you consumers, you are on the right track!!!! Be persistent and do not give up. There are lots of others following similar courses of action, but they have not found this site yet or have not posted on it. Lindsey, your responses are just what they need. Keep your paperwork and, rest assured, you have James Armstrongs attention if he is reading these posts. If the posts were all ridiculous I, as a CEO, would not waste my valuable time responding to foolishness and would not pay it any attention. You now have FCCC spending even more money on their lawyers to respond to these posts. Not to name names or single any one out, but some people in the debt management industry consider their clients poor people without the resources to hire a competent attorney to fight their high priced corporate lawyers. So, they do not always take your threats seriously. From the posts I enjoyed reading, it seems like some people at FCCC are getting a little worried about their future paychecks as more and more consumers take action against them. Once again, you are on the right track and it appears FCCC is taking notice!

Lindsay,

You are most welcome. I completely understand your situation. I myself got in over my head with credit at one point although in my case it was just being young, not realizing my limits and sheer stupidity. After going into finance (car business and mortgages) I was able to educate myself on credit and how it all works and rebuild my standing with the credit bureaus. Its not at all easy and it can feel like beating your head with a brick but there IS a light at the end of the tunnel. Stay focused on your goal and you will get out of this situation.

Good luck!!!

Elizabeth, Thank you very much for that info. It was such a huge mistake on my part to go to one of these companies to begin with but sometimes when you feel desperate you make decisions that aren't always the best decisions. That is the way these companies get you. They prey on desperate people looking for help and a way out of their current situation. All I can do at this point is move forward and work on rebuilding my credit over time. Live and learn right? Some lessons are harder learned than others. And as for the president of the company giving out my last name and some details of my personal finances, I am just as amazed as you at how unprofessional he is and everyone who works for him. I have an attorney now and I plan on addressing this with him as well. Anyway, thank you again for your comments.

Lindsay,

One more thing, any company that would come online to a site and reveal confidential information on a client is WAY out of line and I hope that you printed all of that out and consider consulting an attorney. If I had done something like that with one of my clients private information I would expect to be sued until someone else owned everything I had.

I hope that anyone that reads this thread realizes just how inappropriate and unprofessional that is and vows to never use that company.

Again, good luck to you........

Lindsay,

Having a history of working in car sales and doing mortgages (don't hate me for my past jobs) I have spent a SIGNIFICANT amount of time going over peoples credit reports and payment histories. You have no idea how often I have heard the exact same story that you have told on this site. The ONLY legitimate credit counseling service I have ever come across in all my years of working in finance was Consumer Credit Counseling Service. They (last I heard anyway) are a free service who is paid by the credit card companies, not you. I have personally known people who have used them and have been very pleased with their service.

I also will mention to you that when I worked in finance my experience was that someone who enrolled in a debt consolidation service such as FCCC was pretty much treated the same as someone who was in a Chapter 13 Bankruptcy. None of the lenders I worked with would even consider touching someone in one of these programs until they were at least 75% complete with the program. Didn't matter what your prior payment history was. Those services do generally show up on your credit bureau and it is considered a bad, bad thing to have them on there. You could have filed a Chapter 7 and been more appealing to a lender. This is not true for all lenders I'm sure, I'm just sharing MY experience with lenders so you will be aware. Your best bet is always to attempt to work out your issues with the credit card companies directly - not always easy to do but its the least painful for your credit bureau. I would also suggest to you that you get a current copy of your credit report so you can assess the damage that has been done.

Best of luck to you.

Lindsay,

Having a history of working in car sales and doing mortgages (don't hate me for my past jobs) I have spent a SIGNIFICANT amount of time going over peoples credit reports and payment histories. You have no idea how often I have heard the exact same story that you have told on this site. The ONLY legitimate credit counseling service I have ever come across in all my years of working in finance was Consumer Credit Counseling Service. They (last I heard anyway) are a free service who is paid by the credit card companies, not you. I have personally known people who have used them and have been very pleased with their service.

I also will mention to you that when I worked in finance my experience was that someone who enrolled in a debt consolidation service such as FCCC was pretty much treated the same as someone who was in a Chapter 13 Bankruptcy. None of the lenders I worked with would even consider touching someone in one of these programs until they were at least 75% complete with the program. Didn't matter what your prior payment history was. Those services do generally show up on your credit bureau and it is considered a bad, bad thing to have them on there. You could have filed a Chapter 7 and been more appealing to a lender. This is not true for all lenders I'm sure, I'm just sharing MY experience with lenders so you will be aware. Your best bet is always to attempt to work out your issues with the credit card companies directly - not always easy to do but its the least painful for your credit bureau. I would also suggest to you that you get a current copy of your credit report so you can assess the damage that has been done.

Best of luck to you.

Lindsay,

Having a history of working in car sales and doing mortgages (don't hate me for my past jobs) I have spent a SIGNIFICANT amount of time going over peoples credit reports and payment histories. You have no idea how often I have heard the exact same story that you have told on this site. The ONLY legitimate credit counseling service I have ever come across in all my years of working in finance was Consumer Credit Counseling Service. They (last I heard anyway) are a free service who is paid by the credit card companies, not you. I have personally known people who have used them and have been very pleased with their service.

I also will mention to you that when I worked in finance my experience was that someone who enrolled in a debt consolidation service such as FCCC was pretty much treated the same as someone who was in a Chapter 13 Bankruptcy. None of the lenders I worked with would even consider touching someone in one of these programs until they were at least 75% complete with the program. Didn't matter what your prior payment history was. Those services do generally show up on your credit bureau and it is considered a bad, bad thing to have them on there. You could have filed a Chapter 7 and been more appealing to a lender. This is not true for all lenders I'm sure, I'm just sharing MY experience with lenders so you will be aware. Your best bet is always to attempt to work out your issues with the credit card companies directly - not always easy to do but its the least painful for your credit bureau. I would also suggest to you that you get a current copy of your credit report so you can assess the damage that has been done.

Best of luck to you.

Lindsay,

Having a history of working in car sales and doing mortgages (don't hate me for my past jobs) I have spent a SIGNIFICANT amount of time going over peoples credit reports and payment histories. You have no idea how often I have heard the exact same story that you have told on this site. The ONLY legitimate credit counseling service I have ever come across in all my years of working in finance was Consumer Credit Counseling Service. They (last I heard anyway) are a free service who is paid by the credit card companies, not you. I have personally known people who have used them and have been very pleased with their service.

I also will mention to you that when I worked in finance my experience was that someone who enrolled in a debt consolidation service such as FCCC was pretty much treated the same as someone who was in a Chapter 13 Bankruptcy. None of the lenders I worked with would even consider touching someone in one of these programs until they were at least 75% complete with the program. Didn't matter what your prior payment history was. Those services do generally show up on your credit bureau and it is considered a bad, bad thing to have them on there. You could have filed a Chapter 7 and been more appealing to a lender. This is not true for all lenders I'm sure, I'm just sharing MY experience with lenders so you will be aware. Your best bet is always to attempt to work out your issues with the credit card companies directly - not always easy to do but its the least painful for your credit bureau. I would also suggest to you that you get a current copy of your credit report so you can assess the damage that has been done.

Best of luck to you.

I too got a letter from the better business bureau and an email stating that Mr. Garner told them that they were dealing with my complaints directly with me. I sent a rebuttal back stating that I was in no way satisfied and that Mr. Garner was being untruthful.

The other day I received another response from the BBB basically saying the same thing....that my complaints were being resolved with me. I sent yet another rebuttal back. It sounds like many of you are receiving the same response. Just keep sending them back over and over again. They can't ignore everyone. Can you believe how unprofessional the so called president of this company is? He gave my last name and other personal info such as the creditors I owed money too on this forum. What a jerk.

Anyway, this is to Lisa who called me, I was not at all bothered by the fact that you called me. I wrote down your number and I intend to call you back it has been a really crazy week for me though. It is just so amazing that they lie so blatantly. I have my bank statements and my creditors statements right before me.

I have also composed a letter and I have sent it off to all of my creditors explaining to them what has happened to us, that we were involved with a fraudulent company who promised to help us and did not follow through with anything etc. etc. and could they please work with us directly so that we can pay our debts to them. We'll see what happens with that. I included in my letters the name and address of FCCC so maybe, just maybe they won't do business with them anymore if they hear enough about it.

My balances have gone up so much in the last few months and I am just sick about it. So much money down the drain. This has been such a hard, hard life lesson for me and what is so bothersome to me is that I too joined the program to lower interest rates and pay my debts down faster, aside from high debt we had always paid on time and our credit score was on the high end.

Now i am frightened to even look but i will have to at some point to survey the damage. Seven years is how long these black marks will be there. I can't believe no one has contacted any of us about a class action suit. We are talking hundreds of people who have been screwed over here. I have an attorney and he said that often times a company like this will take money from people over and over again and when it blows up in their faces they claim bankruptcy, close their doors only to reopen again a few months later under a different name.

Hopefully that won't happen to us. He also strongly recommended that I never do business out of state again. Since fccc is not licensed to practice this business in the state of Maine where i live, this situation could possibly be construed as a type of mail fraud. Of course it needs to be looked into more carefully. There are true nonprofit debt management programs out there for those of you, like myself, who have been put in a horrible financial situation.

These companies apply ALL OF YOUR MONEY to the creditors and their fee is paid by the credit card companies 100% of your payments go to them. Of course check them out thoroughly and go to someone local. Anyway, enough blathering. Let's just all follow through with the attorney generals office and the bbb etc. I am not going to give up.

In no way has my experience been as bad as any of yours and I truly feel for all of you but I am afraid that my luck maybe changing with this company. My husband and I have been a customer of theres for a couple years now, the worst that had happened was them pulling money to soon causing my account to overwithdraw because I had not put the money in yet (I use a different account to be debited from rather than my main) this had happened a couple of times and I am still trying to get my fee back that the bank charged me. I have submitted complaints to the BBB regarding broken promisses, rude customer service, and that dam fee that nobody really knows where it is going. Well my last complaint to the BBB got Mr. Phil Garner to responde and it was very similar to the complaint above me response saying he would like to resolve this with me personally well I denied that offer due to the fact if it was that easy there would be no need to contact the BBB. Anyways I am afraid my latest problem with them could be more serious, my money gets pulled the 15th of every month, well no such luck for this month the money is still sitting there and I keep on being told that the money will be pulled. I have been told by Jessica and Denise that my creditors have been notified my monthly payment will be late due to the problems that they are having with there bank causing delays in the pulls, well I called all of them and there is no records of anyone contacting them concering this matter. My husband and I have great credit, the only reason we did this program was to lower the intrest rates and to consolidate our bills, I had no idea it would be like this. I have made a dicision to pay off my creditors this week on my own because I cant trust that they could do that for me, stop them from pulling (or in this case not pulling) money from my account and going after them for the deposit I put down when I first signed up with them. I figure if they can break there contract rules why cant I, its not ok that these people can not do there job and I would be more than willing to join in any class action suit brought upon this company!

Greg! Thank you for so eloquently and accurately hitting the nail on the head regarding James Armstrong and the grossly inaccurate figure he presented about the number of complaints. Just thought I'd ad that in addition to reducing the number of reported complaints he also misrepresented the facts about how long the company has been in business. The one thing I mustg disagree with you on however, is how well Mr. Armstrong presented his rebuttal. I thought his rebuttal was not well spoken at all and contained all sorts of grammatical crimes and travesties:) He has no background in the credit counseling process and furthermore he does not tap those individuals that do for information. He's know for making autocratic decisions that do nothing for the well being of clients or for the integrity of the company. I'm only stating this so consumers get an idea of who they are laying in bed with when they join Family Credit Counseling. As for the non-profit thing and the small fee...Everyone, please bear in mind that Family Credit Counseling also receives funds from creditors in the form of "fairshare" which is a percentage of each disbursement. I'm sure somebody's getting rich and I think we all know who that is. You guys need to let me know if/when a class action suit is in progress. Lindsay, continue to be outspoken in your pursuit of fair treatment...somebody's got to stop this madness...

Lindsay,


We need to get a class action suit start. I am more than willing to join in. I filed a complaint with the BBB in Florida and just heard back. I was informed that Mr. Phil Garner Director of Community of Development with FCCC states that my "concerns" where addressed with me personaly and taken care of. WHAT!?!?!? I have NEVER had a phone call, email or letter returned by the company what so ever. What a bunch of BS. After reviewing the BBB web site agian and reading first hand the number of complaints with the company I can not believe they are getting away with the lies and actual stealing they are doing. I would love so much to be contacted about a class action suit. Lindsay if you get it going let me know. I check the updates on this web site several times a day. I just want my money back. And the fact I have been lied to and cheated pisses me off!!!!

WOW!!! i knew the BBB had a lot of complaints on them but that is truly amazing! I am sorry to see that this unethical business has impacted so many people. A lot more people were probably effected but feel they have no voice in the matter. Anyway, just a quick update, I just checked with the Maine Division of Financial and Credit Licencing Regulations and FCCC is not licensed in the state of Maine which is where i reside. They just want your money so they will do business with anyone anywhere in the country. This has to be illegal.

Mr. Armstrong,

You formulated a very organized response to the original complaint, which made it appear that your company was legitimate. However, honesty is ultimately what sways my opinion.

You stated "36 complaints over a 14 year history of the company is not bad". Well, the true number according to the SE Fla. BBB is 423 complaints in the last 36 months.

You state the release was requested because your company was being unfairly malaigned. Your own words regarding the number of complaints, a number you were dishonest about, are what has malaigned your company.

I am glad to see a scam company owner that lies in the open. There is no longer any question as to your integrity (or lack thereof).

Mr. Armstrong,

You formulated a very organized response to the original complaint, which made it appear that your company was legitimate. However, honesty is ultimately what sways my opinion.

You stated "36 complaints over a 14 year history of the company is not bad". Well, the true number according to the SE Fla. BBB is 423 complaints in the last 36 months.

You state the release was requested because your company was being unfairly malaigned. Your own words regarding the number of complaints, a number you were dishonest about, are what has malaigned your company.

I am glad to see a scam company owner that lies in the open. There is no longer any question as to your integrity (or lack thereof).

Mr. Armstrong,

You formulated a very organized response to the original complaint, which made it appear that your company was legitimate. However, honesty is ultimately what sways my opinion.

You stated "36 complaints over a 14 year history of the company is not bad". Well, the true number according to the SE Fla. BBB is 423 complaints in the last 36 months.

You state the release was requested because your company was being unfairly malaigned. Your own words regarding the number of complaints, a number you were dishonest about, are what has malaigned your company.

I am glad to see a scam company owner that lies in the open. There is no longer any question as to your integrity (or lack thereof).

Thank you very much for your comment. Let 's stand by our convictions. We all know that we are right and we should expect these people to own up to their mistakes and responsibilities. I don't see anyone being swayed by Mr. Armstrongs rebuttal.

I to have had nothing but grief from this company. And have filed my own complaint with this web site, The BBB and now with my States Atty Generals office.

I find it intresting that Mr. Armstrong took a lot of time to type out his rebutal. Why is it that no matter who it is we have all talked to on the phonee at Family Credit we have all been brushed off and not helped at all. We have been told over and over that there is nothing they can do to help of even tell us fully what is going on. The practice of this company is simple here. Take! Take! Take! There is no guidence of help. Hundreds if not thousands of your so called "clients" have screwed here. And we are ticked off and have gotten no help or understanding from the so called "staff" you say is working so hard. Legally if we just simply want are money back we have to right to get it back.

So your rebutal "Mr. Armstrong" is sad attempt and will not help any of us that have be ruined by your company. And we hope that in time (and yes it is taking time) to make sure the truth for each and every one of us comes out.

You know Mr. Armstrong many of simply just want our money back. And that is all. Plain and simple. But due to your companys lack of listen to that need and understand it you will now be facing more angry and disgusted people. Who in turn will group together and take the action needed to simply get what we want.

Simply wanting money back,

Actually in response to Mr. Armstrong's pathetic rebuttal, first i want to say that NONE OF MY CREDITORS HAVE BEEN PAID ANYTHING because i have all of the statements and i have letters from bank of America demanding payment in full within ten days because they have not received payment in four months, i have a letter from Citibank also stating that they have not received any payments in five months and i have a letter from Kohl's department store stating the same thing. I am sure more letters are to follow.

Also creditors are calling me morning, noon, and night. I have all of my statements from my creditors and all of them reflect no payments whatsoever. Also all of my balances have significantly increased due to nonpayment so the proof is in the pudding and i have it. In regards to my emails, I was very professional and only one time did i swear and it was on a day where i was particularly angry and fed up, I used the word "assholes" and that was it.

I did not, Mr Armstrong use "every name in the book." Also, as you had stated that I cursed, screamed and was rude, well, actually, I have truly never cursed or screamed at anyone over the phone, partly because i can't ever get a hold of anyone, but mostly because i have up until very recently, been very patient with your company. I was using emails as a way to get some kind of response because as we all know you can't get through to anyone over there and no one ever calls you back.

Was I rude? Yes i was, and for that, i make NO apologies for. Also, at home i have an answering machine that picks up after only three rings, i have caller id, and i have call waiting that also has caller id and i have, in addition to my answering machine, voice mail through the phone company. You did not try and contact me that day or any day, that i am sure of.

You have the correct number on file as well because the handful of times i was able to talk to someone i double checked and it was correct. You owe me a lot more than $114.00. You did pull funds from my account in December and in January and the double pull in January was not to catch up for the December pull because i also have my bank statements to prove that funds were taken in December.

Now, let us deal with the money order shall we? I did call the north carolina office after the hurricane and the person on the phone gave me the name and address of consumer debt management and told me to send it there. I did so because i was told to do so after having explained the situation to him.

After i saw that it was received, because i tracked it through the mail, i called to check the status of it and they said someone would check and call me back. No one ever called me back so i called and i called and i called over and over again from November until present and TWICE i faxed over the carbon copy of the money order, the receipt from the money order, the receipt showing that it was received, and the address it was received at and still no one would help.

At this point i began to amicably and respectfully email asking nicely and politely for someone to help me locate these lost funds and no one would help yet again. So yes my emails became rude because i am being taken for a ride by you people. You have STILL not sent me back the money order which you located in a suspense account. Mr. Garner asked me if I wanted it sent back to me or sent to my creditors and i said that i wanted it sent back to me immediately.

Then the release was sent. I am not signing over my rights to pursue recourse so that i can get all of my money back from you. You have taken 570.00 via money order, 568.00 in December for the December payment, once again i have the statements from the bank to prove it, and 568.00 for the January payment. Now, considering you are in the field of finances you should probably know that that amount equals 1,706.00 and that does not include the money i so foolishly paid to christian debt solutions because i don't hold you accountable for that. That was my mistake. Where you came up with the figure of a "whopping 114.00" i shall never know.

When my January payment was pulled twice ( AND ONE OF THE PAYMENTS WAS NOT FOR THE DECEMBER PAYMENT) and i realized i was getting scammed, as we all have been. I had to fight tooth and nail to get the funds which were taken from my account in January over 1,000.00 in one week to get them put back into my account and i was promised that accounting would call me back and i called and called and was told that the funds would be put back day in and day out and that someone would call me back.

I got the run around as they say. The funds were put back BUT THREE WEEKS LATER!!! Only one payment was put back. The other 568.00 in january was kept for my so called payment that month.

It is a small miracle that i was able to make my mortgage payment and car payment and utility payments and it is amazing that no checks bounced as my family and i needed that money for living expenses. But no one cared.

I really believe had i not been as persistent as i had been that i would not have received them back at all.

Let me just say once again that Mr. Armstrong is trying to cover for himself and his so called company by straight up lying and saying that the December payment was pulled in January.

Mr. Armstrong do you not think that i have bank statements to prove this? I have creditor statements, letters from creditors, bank statements ,money order carbon copies and receipts that all will discount your ridiculous attempt at a rebuttal.

You are untruthful Mr. Armstrong and i have retained a lawyer who will help me to recover my funds.

Not only have you sent nothing to my creditors but you have ruined my credit report, you have caused a huge amount of money in late fees and in turn my balances have gone up significantly and you have caused my family a lot of emotional distress.

How can you possibly say that you have paid my creditors? A lot of people do not yet know about ripoffreport.com and so they have turned to the more obvious recourse of action which would be the better business bureau and if you researched that you would see that there have been, as of a couple of weeks ago, over two hundred new reports filed against you.

Also Jon Simon at Christian debt solutions told me that he has transferred over seventy files of extremely dissatisfied clients from FCCC over to another debt management company because you people are not doing your jobs.

If this is all caused by the hurricane than you were a very weak company to begin with and someone certainly didn't know what they were doing because you should have had a back up system in place in case of an emergency like this, which happens all the time in Florida, Hello?

Upon knowing you didn't have backup files and an emergency system in place perhaps the ethical thing to do would have been not to accept or take on any new clients right before or after the hurricane.

Its all about money though and if you were up and running enough to take money from people and to accept fees from people you should have been up and running enough to provide the services promised.

I am mad as hell about what you have done to my life and i am not going to accept this response from you. Like i said several times before, I have all of the documents to prove and back up every single one of my complaints and accusations. It is not just your word against mine.

I have proof of everything. You will be receiving correspondence from my lawyer very soon. You really are just adding more fuel to my fire by lying like this mr. Armsrong and it just speaks volumes about how truly unethical your business practices truly are. Bring it on.

Ms. Barrett or Linsay as she calls herself on this site has been a little less then perfect to telling the whole story and in fact has left out quite a few details. To every good story there is a kernal of truth, but like the old saying there is 3 sides to every story. (hers ours and what really happen)

We are not going to attempt to accuse anyone of being wrong, every person is welcome to their own opinion, we just want everyone that reads this site to understand that with 34,000 clients 36 complaints over a 14 year history of the company is not bad. Especially when the bulk of the complaints came after a devastating hurricane struck South Florida.

We do not profess that we are completley perfect and our firm and employees have not made bad judgement calls trying to recover the 5 months worth of data that was lost, infact we have had some employees woking 7 days a week 12 hours a day to rectify some the unfortunate occurances we have caused.

Let's take Ms. Barrett's situation and I will try to narrate to the best of my ability her circumstances, we typically do not speak directly regarding our clients situations, but lets just all agree Ms. Barrett has opened up the door and it is time that FCCC to respond.

First and foremost FCCC does not charge a setup fee to any client to enroll in a Debt Management Plan, and only charges a nominal monthly management plan to cover the cost of the servicing of a clients account. Ms. Barrett enrolled through a 3rd party enrolling company and paid them a fee that firms name is Christian Debt Solutions, this firm dis enroll clients to FCCC but in no way is associated by common ownership and at no time did FCCC receive any compensation from them for the referral of the file.

So with no money FCCC and it's resources set out to help Ms. Barrett and her husband in the debt situation they got themselves into.

Ms. Barrett claims she mailed a money order to our office in the in early part of November to cover her first payment to her creditors and we had no record of receiving it. We told Ms. Barrett on multiple occassions in November that we never received the money order. Come December Ms. Barrett called us to notify that her creditors have not been notified, she was informed that he reason theat they were not notified yet is that we need to know here first payment date to the creditors before we disburse funds. We constinued to search for this missing money order.

In reading the notes on this clients account, even though we did not have payment in house,(remember we get our fee, monthly as a portion of the clients payment, so no payment no fee) we worked very hard to make sure her creditors were aware of the situation that the client has not setup an ACH for electronic payment as of yet, she told us she has mailed a money order that we never received. We spoke to her creditors and told them that the client was making efforts now to setup and ACH and we anticipated a payment going out to them by end of December.

on 12/12/2005, we received her ACH form back, and was activated in our system on the 14th for a pull on the 16th. The payment was pulled on the 16th, was cleared funds in our trust account on the 20th and all payments to Ms. Barretts 8 creditors were disbursed between 12/21 (paper checks) and 12/23 electronic payments.

At this point a money order was not located, Ms. did not send in any proof of one ever existing.

On 12/15 the day after everything was setup on the system, one of our Senior Counselors advised Ms. Barrett, since the December payment was missed it was in her best interest to setup a manual to cover the no payment in December, Ms. Barrett agreed and authorized this payment. Once again she stated that a Money order was sent and received by FCCC on 11/7, our counselor told her we had no recored of it, and that she would set a task to research it in accounting, but asked Ms. Barrett once again to offer up the tracking information or a copy of a CLEARED/CASHED Money Order.

A manual was set for 12/20 to pull the make up payment for December per the authorization given from Ms. Barrett. (keep in mind that we already had a authorized ACH form to pull money on the 16th of every month to cover reoccuring payments)

The next thing that happened can count as FCCC's internal mistake. The manual set for 12/20 never pulled quite possibly and this is just a guess but the manual date might have been set for date that already passed, becasue we actually send the pull information to the bank 3 days early. So if the manual was set for a date that was already pulled it will carry over to the next months ach group, in this case the 20th.

During this time the client kept calling in regards to the money and we kept checking for it and to no avail did we find it. We asked repeatedly for copies of the cashed money order and all Ms. barrett would provide was a copy of the original money order from the time of purchase but not a copy of a cleared money order so we could trace it through our bank.

On the 16th of January we pulled Ms Barretts January payment as authorized by Ms. Barrett on December 14th. the 16th was once again her reoccuring pull date, this money cleared into our trust account on 1/20/06 and was subsequently disbursed to Ms. Barrett's 8 creditors on the on the 23rd for paper checks and 26th for electronic payments.

This is were we get into either Ms. Barrett leaving out facts, being confused or quite possibly maybe one of or employees did not pick up this to relay it to her properly but on January 20th Ms. Barretts manual that she authorized for December 20th pulled from her account. I am sure Ms. Barrett would have remembered this payment if it was pulled correctly in December, but since it was pulled so closely to her January payment and 30 days I am sure Ms. Barrett was taken by suprise.

These funds subsequently were cleared into our account on 1/25 and disbursments were sent on 1/25 for paper checks and 1/26 for electronic payments.

Ms. Barrett called our office on 1/24 to inform us of the january double pull (remember actually authorized in December to make, just made 30 days late) The rep that she spoke to at the time was a fairly new rep and did not have the experience we assume to have read the notes or look at the history of manuals, and just assumed we made a double pull from Ms. Barretts account, but in fact we had authorization to do so to make up the missed December payment.

Ms. Barrett and the rep not realizing that this double pull was actually a make up payment for the missed December payment worked together to get the ball rolling that once the money was cleared funds in our account we will return them to her through vanco our processor. (Ms. Barrett confirms in her ripoff report these funds in fact have been returned)

We had spoke to client regarding the above item multiple times between the 1/24 and 1/26, sometime on the 26th a Do Not Disturbwas placed on her account to make sure the funds were not disbursed, but as you see from my notes above in fact they were disbursed between the 25th and 26th.

On the 26th the client told us to turn off all future ach pulls that she would be mailing money orders in the future.

Since the DND was placed on too late and all funds were disbursed we tried to have multiple people contact her to explain the situation, but Ms. Barretts cell phone was disconnected and she did not have voice mail at her home, so we sent her an email. In which she replied that we are theives, we stole her money and that she is going to contact the Florida AG, the BBB and everything else. Once again I think Ms. Barrett fails toremember the authorization she gave us for the manual.

So at this point since we could not get Ms.Barrett on the phone, and could not have a civil email conversation with here without her cursing and using every word in the book, we set out to figure out the best way to reverse a set of those January payments to get her back the extra payment.

The way we did that is as follows, Ms. Barrett had 8 accounts, 6 of them were electronic and 2 were paper checks. We had 2 sets of payments to work with to try and get enough money voided and returned to give Ms. Barrett back the money from the 2nd pull. The paper checks were already mailed, we could of stopped payment on those but we would have run the risk of the creditor still receiving, depositing for it to come back returned and have Ms. Barrett possibly get sued. With the electronic we have up to 3 days to recind the payment, so thats what we did is we recinded payments to all her electronic payments and let the funds in paper check go.

We subsequently refundedback to Ms. Barrett the maney that we bought back into house.

Ms. Barrett claims that her creditorshave not got paid. Let me summarize that from what I said above.
From her first payment in December all 8 of her creditors got paid
From her 2nd payment only the paper checks got paid Davis Oil and Bank of America Recovery
From her third payment only the paper checks got paid Davis Oil and Bank of America Recovery.

So basically Ms. Barrett made three payments, but an amount equal to one of her payments was returned to her.

I am sure if Ms. Barrett contacted all 8 of her creditors she will see that the 6 electronic ones only received the one payment in December and the paper check ones received 3 payments.

Since Ms. Barrett could not be civil andwould notlisten to reson, we felt this was the best course of action to get that 3rd payment that she does not remember authorizing back to her.

Ok now that we got that squared away, regarding the supposed double pull, Did we have authorization to make it? The answer is yes! Did we make a mistake and pull it 30 days late? yes we did and we take full responsibility for this. Has Ms. Barrett either received a reund or credit from her creditors from the money we had in house and the answer once again is yes.

Now onto the Missing Money Order, that we did not receive, take, deposit, steal or whatever else Ms. Barrett said we did with it.

Ms. Barrett to date has never sent us a copy of a cashedmoney order, but from looking at the money order we noticed it was made out to Consumer Debt Management and Education, Inc and mailed to Charlotte, NC. Once we noticed this we contacted CDME, since there happens to be common officers in CDME and FCCC and we have a close working relationship, CDME was able to locate the money order and subsequently forward FCCC a check for it.

Now this is where it is anybodys guess how this happened but I can only assume there was either some confusion of miscommunication and below is how it might have occured.

When Wilma struck South Florida on October 24th, FCCC took 40 employees to Charlotte NC to operate the phones so clients can call. We were utilizing the office space of CDME.

If Ms. Barrett called during that time frame for directions to send the money order, she might have been given the North Carolina address since we did not have power in Florida and might have been told to Attention it to CDME, since it is their office. She might have taken that as make it out to CDME. For that matter, I was not the one have the call maybe she was even told to make it out. Lets just assume A mistake was made on both Ms. Barretts and FCCC employees part. But was it done maliciously I dont think so.

As for the release we asked Ms. Barrett to sign, yes we did ask her to sign a release and I will explain why. Ms. Barrett has set out to defame FCCC with not having all the facts, continues to say we stole her money and that we are theives and this is all just untrue and FCCC is willing to present this to anybody. We tried on multiple occassions through multiple employees to present this to Ms. Barrett and all she can do is curse, scream and be rude.

We are not sitting here saying we are perfect and that we do nothing wrong. In fact we openly admit there has been problems caused by this hurricane that has caused us to make some mistakes, but we are here and we are willing to fix them.

If you are a client of FCCC and you have a problem or issue, please lets work together to solve.

We have a special rentention team to help all clients with extreme problems, please contact them at 866-464-0112

Thank you for reading this and your open mindedness to realize there is always 2 sides to a story!

Also as a side note FCCC's total fees to Ms. Barrett through this mountain of followup and tons of work was a whopping $114.00.

Stay posted we will be posting full narrations to all complaints on this site, at least the ones that are real clients, not fake ones that are either competitors or disgruntled exemployees

James R Armstrong Jr.
President
Family Credit Counseling Corporation

I just recived a statment from bank of america with my recent payment along with a payment from FCCC. They have made no attempt to call me and inform me of what they are doing with this. Are they allowed to make payments on my account since I have taken controll over them again? I would just like to recive my money back and pay my own bills. Also if they are non-profit how come they charge a 35.00 contribution fee and why are they tacking on 25.00 NSF fees.
I am very upset.

i spoke too soon for sure. they located my money order, asked if i wanted it sent to my creditors or did i want it back!! HA can you believe that? I told them to immediately send me my money back and Phil garner whose address is pgarner @ family credit help.org said he would overnight it back to me as soon as i signed a release form. I thought the release was just a formality and then i opened my attachment and it was basically a legal document stating that i would withdraw all claims, complaints, obligations that i had against them blah, blah, blah and so i sent him an email back telling him i would not sign his stupid release form because they were not getting away that easy. Please everyone, there has to be enough of us out there to get a class action suit going. I want justice and i hate those bastards.

to anyone who is reading this, i have been so persistent and a complete and total pain in the butt to fccc. I am sending emails everyday to one man in particular who responds to my mail and although i still try to remain professional, sometimes i write very angry ones to him threatening to get a lawyer and telling him of all the complaints i have filed. . Anyway i have informed them of all the complaints that i have filed and how they have sent our lives into a total state of chaos and stress and i am starting to very slowly get cooperation. They deposited the funds back into my account and i just received an email from the man i have basically been harassing that said he found my money order and he will be mailing me back a check priority mail. We'll see what happens. I don;t know what to do about the other payments i have made that were never sent to my creditors and how do I deal with with ruined credit? One thing at a time i guess. Anyway my point is, be completely aggressive with these people and don't let up. I'm not going to until i am satisfied.

to anyone who is reading this, i have been so persistent and a complete and total pain in the butt to fccc. I am sending emails everyday to one man in particular who responds to my mail and although i still try to remain professional, sometimes i write very angry ones to him threatening to get a lawyer and telling him of all the complaints i have filed. . Anyway i have informed them of all the complaints that i have filed and how they have sent our lives into a total state of chaos and stress and i am starting to very slowly get cooperation. They deposited the funds back into my account and i just received an email from the man i have basically been harassing that said he found my money order and he will be mailing me back a check priority mail. We'll see what happens. I don;t know what to do about the other payments i have made that were never sent to my creditors and how do I deal with with ruined credit? One thing at a time i guess. Anyway my point is, be completely aggressive with these people and don't let up. I'm not going to until i am satisfied.

This is such a freakin' nightmare. My balances have significantly increased sice joining their fradulent program,my money order is still missing along with all the money they have deducted from my bank account. I am at such a loss over what to do. I sent a letter to the attorney general of florida and filed a complaint with the bbb. there are soooo many complaints on this company which makes me think if we join forces we could do something about this. What a horrible experience this has been. live and learn. I just want us all to get our needed money back so we can move on with our lives and try to pick up the pieces. Any comments or suggestions are welcome.

Isn't Family Credit Counseling a place you go to when your credit cards are maxed out, you can't keep up with paying your bills, etc.? Then, Lindsay, if as you say: 'up until the point were i joined this so called debt relief program my credit score was outstanding and all of my payments were on time', why did you contact them? To me, it doesn't make sense.

If I'm mistaken in my understanding of what this shlocky company does, could someone please explain it? I use that terse adjective because I've read numerous complaints about it.

Isn't Family Credit Counseling a place you go to when your credit cards are maxed out, you can't keep up with paying your bills, etc.? Then, Lindsay, if as you say: 'up until the point were i joined this so called debt relief program my credit score was outstanding and all of my payments were on time', why did you contact them? To me, it doesn't make sense.

If I'm mistaken in my understanding of what this shlocky company does, could someone please explain it? I use that terse adjective because I've read numerous complaints about it.

Isn't Family Credit Counseling a place you go to when your credit cards are maxed out, you can't keep up with paying your bills, etc.? Then, Lindsay, if as you say: 'up until the point were i joined this so called debt relief program my credit score was outstanding and all of my payments were on time', why did you contact them? To me, it doesn't make sense.

If I'm mistaken in my understanding of what this shlocky company does, could someone please explain it? I use that terse adjective because I've read numerous complaints about it.

They took unauthorized funds out of my account twice. The day you see it happen stop payment through your bank. Tell them it's unauthorized. It might cost you $20 but it's better then $570.00. Then I go back after FCCC for the money. Of course you may not get it. I am still trying to get back the $25 they over charged me for the monthly fee in October. And a stop payment in Decemeber. I review my checking almost daily just in case something like that happens. They never should of took it out it is totally FCCC fault but reviewing everything is a way to protect yourself.