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

  Working in the debt industry one of the biggest mistakes clients make is simple. Read the details. Ask questions. You clearly didnt understand what you were getting into. Debt settlement can take years depending on the situation. What you are doing is giving false information about a company because you decided to not do more research and read the detail before jumping in. Just because you dont have an email doesnt mean you cant go to your local library and make one. This is whats wrong with most clients they wont put the work in it to do more research and learn more about it. They just throw money at companies and expect them to do it because they paid with out fully understanding what they just did. This is your fault not the company.       The money you gave to the company went to the lawyer. The other big issue is if you dont put money into the escrow account or pay less than what the plan was set by you and the associate then its going to take longer. Clearly you jumped into something you didnt understand and now blame others for your mistakes.

Just to give you another tip for you and future clients that want to try this program. The Company that loaned you the money or gave you credit is not obligated in anyway to agree to a settlement. They in fact can turn it around and take you to court and sue you. Thats a risk with these type of programs. Fortunately most of those companies rather not deal with court because its going to cost them time and money which in some cases isnt worth it and they will just take the settlement. Furthermore a person who takes the time to do the research and learn and yes I will say it not be L A Z Y (I was a former person who did this but learned) will aslo know how to get it done with out hurting their credit. If you just do it and they dont ask for it they will mark it on your credit therfore making it harder for you to get any other loans, credit, etc etc. No other company will even think about giving you anything with a negative mark like that. Well there are some out there, but they will take advantage of you and charge you a crazy intrest rate that you will end up paying double or even 10x as much. Ive seen it working in the debt field.       

On a further note the company did do good work on the debt settlement side. Clients who are satisfied with debt settlement do 2 simple thins research and asking questions. They also did what they needed to do to help. Not only that you are the one who created the debt not them. Debt isnt solved in a matter of days it takes time because its companies disputing or agreeing to terms to satisfy the debt. You are not the only one imagine thousands of people or more doing the same as you, The company you created the debt with only has so many employees to handle that situation. Lesson here to you and any others that are interested in debt resolution do your research dont be lazy also you created the problem in the first place dont blame them they are trying to help and they also need to follow laws and guidelines. Money cant fix everything. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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