Re: Collections, charge-offs, confusions, HELP

Posted by Boadicea (66.149.179.202) on August 18, 2004 at 18:22:40:

In Reply to: Collections, charge-offs, confusions, HELP posted by rookiegirl on August 18, 2004 at 17:38:59:

Welcome! You are certainly not alone. You've learned a valuable lesson about debt settlement scams, but unfortunately at a cost.

As far as AMEX is concerned, are you still being charged late fees? If you are, you are probably dealing with internal collections and they may not yet have charged off the account (particularly if you have been making payments, albeit less than minimum payments, every month).

AMEX tends to be rather stern and blustery at first, but I've found them to be one of the better creditors to deal with as long as you TRY to pay them something reasonable. Your payments are what I would think would be considered reasonable to prevent a charge-off, but AMEX would probably want something closer to $150/month (at least at first) for a $7000 balance to make it worthwhile for them to keep the account long-term.

NOT talking to them is probably the worst thing you can do. Talking to them on the phone is only slightly better. If you're going to talk to them via voice, try to talk to an account supervisor and explain your situation with the debt settlement company and how you are trying to rectify the damages.

But even better, you should probably make your offer to continue paying at a rate you can afford, and also offer to gradually increase the amount as you are able to afford. In the meantime, don't stop paying them unless you really want the account to get charged off. Pay what you can, and as long as they are accepting the payments from you and *haven't* sold the account to an external collection agency, you may be able to convince them that it would be in their best interests to work with you.

But if they charge off the account AND send it to an external CA, that's a different story. The CA will be much more difficult to work with, and far less trustworthy. Try to keep the account with AMEX if you possibly can, even if it means paying higher interest for awhile. If you can ever get them in agreement, however grudging, they will eventually bring your interest back to prime and become your best friend again.

That's just my experience...your mileage may vary. :-)

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