In January of 2008 my husband and I anticipated having trouble paying bills as he took a lower paying job which had amazing benefits and will eventually bring more stability. We checked out our options for consolidation, remortgaging and everything else under the sun. We were somehow hypnotized into going with a program called "debt validation" which is a process where lawyers request all of your signed documentation and payment info from your creditors and audit it for mistakes, illegal activity on the part of the creditors, unfair credit fees, unfair late charges, and etc... They supposedly put in dispute letters to each credit card company and any and all correspondence with the creditors is supposed to be directed to the "validation lawyers". While the lawyers are handling all of this, your account is put on hold (or so they said) which would mean you don't have to pay the monthly statements and late fees are not to be assessed. As this is going on, the money you pay to the Law Center is put into an escrow account and it is used to "settle" any accounts that the creditors wish to close. According to the law company we used, when a credit card company CAN NOT supply all of the legal paperwork and bills, they offer to settle the account for a munch lower amount of money. The lawyers said: "Most credit card companies do not have all of the documentation needed to satisfy the law and offer to settle." Sounds great right? Almost to good to be true. Well, it was too good to be true. We went with a company called THE CONSUMER LAW CENTER--make a mental note of it please because you will want to avoid them like the plague. One month after sending them our first escrow payment our creditors were calling and trying to arrange payments on the cards (we had the money to pay them at the time, but the lawyers told us DO NOT PAY the cards-by law they have to suspend the payments during disputes) so we didn't pay and told them to contact the Consumer Law Center for any questions or problems. The creditors told us they had not received any notification of dispute and that we were responsible for the bills. The calls came everyday. We were told to document the calls because the creditors were "breaking the law" in trying to collect on an account that was in dispute. I contacted the CONSUMER LAW CENTER and they said: "The dispute letters have not been sent out yet." A month had passed and no paperwork had gone out! WHY? The woman told me that our first payment hadn't been made yet and would be withdrawn in 5 days (on a particular date). I blew my top- we had given them our bank account number for automatic withdrawal of the funds, it should have been done immediately and paperwork should have been filed. The woman said that the money would be withdrawn on that certain date and paperwork would go out. I told her I wanted to cancel the account-I was now late on payments to every account and I would now be looking at another two to three weeks of phone calls before they received the dispute letters-no way. It wasn't worth it to me. She told me to just write a letter and say we were not satisfied and they would cancel the account. I discussed the foul up with my husband and against my best judgement he decided we should just let the process run its course. Easy for him to say--he was working while I was dealing with credit companies calling me and harrassing me everyday. I kept explaining that the Law Center would be contacting them shortly. Skip ahead to two months later and I am still getting the phone calls-no letters received by the creditors yet. We called the law center a few times, complaints were made and our case was reassigned. We received a letter from them acknowledging that they dropped the ball and screwed up and said they would rectify the issue but if we chose to do so, we could cancel the account. STILL my hubby decided to let them make good. We were happy to receive copies of dispute letters from our new case manager, however, at this point we were going on three months of deliquent accounts. The case handler assured us that he would make sure it was reversed with the creditors and that it wouldn't affect our CREDIT RATINGS. Guess what--it didn't happen. After our credit card companies received these disputes, they went after us like sharks. It was terrible. I called the Law Center and let them have it (again) and informed them that I was cancelling. I sent the letter (It was actually the second letter I had sent in disgust) saying how bad their company was and that my account was to be cancelled. I wanted to my back. I still want my money back. I will probably die before they send it back, but we keep trying. Each time we call them we gat a different excuse, a different story, a different lie. The worst part of it all is that our credit rating is SHOT. I had Good to Excellent ratings and now they are a mess. My husbands are worse.

What I learned from this is: had we just phoned our credit card companies right from the beginning and told them of the reduction of our income, they would have first: cut our minimum payments and second: lowered our interest rates and third: excused late fees or eliminated them. They are really not the blood suckers that people claim they are. EVERY SINGLE Creditor is working with us to get us back on track. We should have just gone to them in the beginning.

We are still attempting to claim the money we sent for escrow to The Consumer Law Center. I have sent letters to local News Programs and will continue to fight for the money. Our credit rating, however, will probably never be the same. Lesson learned. For those of you struggling with the bills, just take this advice: Explain the situation to the creditors and ask them to work with you. They will. Please tell others about the dangers of utilitzing "CREDIT VALIDATION" as a form of financial rescue.