Learn from my mistake, do it yourself and save the money!
I just saw a response from Clear One Advantage, and I absolutely was a customer. I worked with Brian Wilcox. Please review again. Brian Wilcox 3500 Boston Street Suite 413 Baltimore, MD 21224 This was his signature on his emails and the documents I signed. Clear One Advantage sent me to Alperstein & Associates... but Clear One Advantage is the company I signed up with! At first Clear One was great. Compassionate, understanding and went above and beyond to help set up a program to help consolidate my debt. What they weren't up front about was the tremendous charges, 29% of your overall debt that they take from your account, and they said that they try and keep your credit score intact. Little damage as possible was their claim and that is what makes them different than other companies like this. Absolute lies. They sent me to a Law Firm, Alperstein and Associates, which no one there speaks English and were very difficult to deal with. Every two weeks, I put money into an account with them so they could start negotiating with my creditors. After about 4 months (and major damage to my credit score... (dropped from 720 to 475)... they finally settled one card. My card had $6K on it, they settled for around $4500 but then charged me $1700 in fees. So, I ended up paying $6200 total.... NO SAVINGS at all! They pulled the full $1700 fee out of my account which left my account in a negative balance. Then told me I had to keep putting money back in so they could start negotiating the next card. I ended up canceling this program and asking for a partial refund, which they denied, so they walked off with $1700 of my money for making one phone call to one card. I then reached back out to Clear One and was told a manager would call me. I have followed up 4-5 times over the last 4 weeks, and no response. I am completely disappointed with this entire process. CALL YOUR CREDITORS YOURSELF!!!! This was an expensive learning lesson for me, but once I started calling my creditors, ALL OF THEM said the same thing: We aren't going to offer those agencies a better deal than we would offer you directly. They have all worked with me on payment arrangements and now I am working on rebuilding my credit from this entire catastrophe! Learn from my mistake... take the time, make the calls yourself, and save your money.