Consumer Credit Counseling & CC Fee's

What is the name of your state? Maryland

Hello. In the year 2000 I joined Consumer Credit Counseling of America to help me consolidate and pay my credit cards. During this time they auto debited money out of my checking account every month to pay my bills. I was told to have no contact with the creditors. I only received one letter from CCC stating that one of my creditors would not accept the agreement. I assumed everything else was fine then and I didn't pay attention to my-statements because the money was coming out automatically.I now know this was the wrong thing to do

Months went by and I had a generic letter sent in my invoice with CCC stating to mail in the most recent statements for the following credit cards. One of my credit cards was on there - capital one. I mailed in my recent statement and noticed how much my bill had grown. I thought that CCC would fix this error since obviously they had made some sort of mistake, why else request the recent statements. I did not follow up like i should have. later i noticed how CCC was paying creditors late and I was in a position to where i could pay my bills on my own and on time with out their assistance any more and left the program. that was 2 years ago.

when i originally signed on with CCC my capital one card was $341. I was over the limit. When I left CCC i had made $300 in payments. During the last 2 years i have made over an additional $350 in payments to capital one. I should have only incurred interest while in the plan, instead my bill is over $1000 now because of over the limit and late fee's. It was to the point i was mailing $60 a month to just cover fee's so my credit balance wouldn't go up. Eventually I didn't have the resources to take care of it any-longer.

I have tried to contact both CCC and Capital-one sparacticlly in the past two years, I get no where. CCC stated I needed a acceptance letter from Capital one before they would even research it. No one at capital one would help me. Either it was to old or I would be transfered to make a payment or put in a voice mail with no response. I was not as diligent as I should have been in resolving this issue, I know most of the fault lies with me.
My cap. one card is now going to be written off as a unpaid debt if not paid by September first.

I eventually was able to get Capital one to fax me original letters CCC sent them, but it didn't state I was accepted. The letter I received from Capital one was dated 4 months after I had joined CCC. It is impossible to get some one to help me at Capital one. No one knows who could help me resolve the issue, whenever i call and ask for a direct line to a department that can help the make me give them all my info and then transfer me to someone to make a payment It frusterates me and makes you wan't to give up and I had a number of times. I tried multiple times to work out a payment plan on my own because I couldn't pay the min. balnce, which was hundres in fee's. Their only advice was to send in a little extra each month on top of the money for the $50 in fee's and 15 in interest. I know they don't want to help because they are making money of me.

Yesterday I faxed all my documentation, statements with fee's, histories etc to every fax# I could get for capital one and CCCA.
I received a e-mail from CCCA today stating there is nothing I can do. That I should have read the fine print and how I wasn't accepted into the program until 6 months after I joined CCCA. I honestly feel this is BS. They clearly had some sort of error on their end to send me a letter requesting my last statement. I have a copy of this letter but it doesn't give any info, date etc. I made my payments on time to CCCA and regardless if I didn't check my statements like I should have, I should have had this credit card paid off 2 years ago. CCCA said that 2 charges on my account where valid when I was in their care, but if i wanted it resolved to contact Capital One. How?!!! no one will help me there.

I am not sure what to do. I want to resolve this. I do not have the money to pay this bill before it goes off as a unpaid debt and I honestly feel I shouldn't have too. I have less then two weeks to find a way to intervine.

Any advice is appreciated. Thank you.

My attorney warned me about this.....

Hello,

When I was in a "no-win" situation, I researched all my options including bankruptcy as well as credit counseling services. My bk attorney warned about this. It is a very common occurence that CCCA can literally screw up one's credit life. What happens is that the creditor has the OPTION of whether to accept the agreement or not. In addition, the creditor has the OPTION to back out of the agreement at any time, for any reason. In addition, your credit report is scarred because of this, in that, since you have not been making the ORIGINAL payment per the ORIGINAL agreement with the creditor, your creditors have been reporting lates and non-payments on your accounts of your credit report which will stay on there for 7 years FROM THE LAST DATE OF ACTIVITY. So this means that since you have had bad credit for the last three years, courtesy of your CCCA, you will have seven more years of bad credit from the time you finalize the remaining balance, PLUS the amount of time between now and the time of your final satisfaction of the remaining balance. Now doesn't this make you want to write to your congressman to ask them to outlaw these leeches, otherwise known as Credit Counseling Agencies?
In my limited knowledge, there is nothing you can do to force them to accept that agreement. This is just the way it works and you will still be held liable for the debt. I am not trying to "antagonize you", but if you had went the bankruptcy route, you would have had to pay only a reduced amount, if anything at all, and you would be stuck with 10 years of defenite bad credit, which after a few years, a bankrupt person can recover to a generally acceptable creditworthy status to most lenders.
However, in your situation, you, at the best case scenario, will have had 10 years of bad credit IF you pay your remaining balance Sept 1, plus your payments over the last 3 years have probably been substantially higher, PLUS you would have most possibly been a much better credit risk without any (or little) debt right now than what you are now.
Please, please, if anybody reads this that is thinking about going to these vultures called Credit Counseling Agencies, at lease consult a bankruptcy lawyer that will give you a FREE consultation. I actually contacted one CCCA and they recommended me to try and get a lower interest rate credit card after I told them I had too much credit card debt and that was why I was calling them. They asked me what my rates were and afte telling them, they said there was now way that they could get any creditor to go with a lower rate. Then they told me to try and get another card with a lower rate.

If there are no other options. Should i attempt to pay it before Sept 1 or let it go as a unpaid debt until I can pay the balance? They say they will reduce my payment by 30%. It is still going to be $700 and I do not have that kind of money. I will be able to borrow from my 401K in a few months and I can pay it off then but it will be too late. I geuss I am screwed either way since I do have these negative marks on my credit report from Capital One for the last few years. I just assumed unpaid debt was a million times worse then late on payment.

"I just assumed unpaid debt was a million times worse then late on payment."

Not true. At least not million times. Sometimes the best option is to let the debt charge off and then do settlement. While it still stays as derogatory in your report for 7 years, but you'll get out of mess sooner.