Advice on CC bills
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Posted by Tyrell
(63.203.103.61) on November 06, 2002 at 07:10:47:
Hello. I wanted to see if I could get some advice for my mother, who has gotten into some trouble with CC bills. She lives in California. She has 6 cards - Providian, Direct Merchants Bank and Capitol One, (I think three are CapOne issued from different places). She had a dispute with a local merchant over a computer - the charge was charged to two of the cards. The merchant was completely inflexable and in the wrong, (short story-a computer bought at their store, which worked fine for six months, went in for a simple upgrade and came back with all kinds of problems that they refused to fix). She wrote the CC companies to dispute the charge and nothing was ever done, so she wrote them to inform them that she would not be paying a bill untill someone addressed the dispute. That was about six months ago. A few months ago, she got some news from another card (Providian) that not only would she not get a credit increase on that card, but they 'may' decrease her credit limit. Taking this into account, and figuring that not paying some, she might as well not pay any of them, she stopped paying any CC bills about two months ago. Her situation now...
The phone calls have been coming for a few months now, but have increased since she stopped paying all of them. Ocasionally, a message will be left by a company about some program they have to pay off her debt.
She contacted AmeriDebt and was thinking of signing up, until she learned that her monthly payment thru them would be $200 more than she was paying to begin with and, with one exception, the APR was not going to change, (so musch for their ads).
Two of the cards are about $7,000 each, a couple are around $3,000 each, and two are less than $400 each. About $21,000 total.
She turned 60 a month ago. She will be retiring in less than two years at the age of 62. The questions she has... What's the next likely step? Charge off? Collection agency? If so, then what? How likely are they to sue? How long? After she retires? While her current paycheck could be attached, what about once she retires? Can retirement checks or Social Security checks be attached? If she does get sued, can she enter into any kind of negotiation with, what I assume at that point would be, a collection agency? At this point, she really doesn't know what to do and is taking a wait-and-see attitude. Any advice would be appreciated........
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