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Consumer Legal Centers

Long Beach, CA

Debbie of Quincy FL (12/30/03):
About a year ago we signed off with this organization for debt settlement. We paid up front $2804.00 on 11-15-01 and thereafter $297.40 until 01-15-03 for help with debt settlement. All of our creditors were unsercured and we wanted to pay them through this plan to keep from having to file bankruptcy. We did this in good faith thinking that this company would be able to help us out.

We kept getting letters from several creditors that they were going to file arbitration on us. At the time we signed up with this company our papers stated that they did not represent arbitration cases. Well at this time we did not know that most of our creditors which were unsecured credit cards had arbitration clauses in their papers. I'm sure this company knew this at the time we signed up because they dealt with everyone of these credit card companies everyday and I'm sure this has came up before with some other client before us.

Well when we got the papers stating that we were going to be taking to arbritration I called Consumer Legal Centers and they kept adivising me not to worry about this that it was not a big deal. Well I didn't and the next thing we got from several creditors was that they were taking us to court to get a judgement against us. Well again they advised us that there was nothing that they could do about this because we were in the State of Florida and not CA. Again I feel like they knew all along that they were just going to make money off of us instead of helping us.

We went to this debt consolidation company hoping that they were going to help us but instead we had to file Chapter 13 Bankruptcy to keep from losing everything that we had ever worked for. This is the main thing that we did not want to do because we knew we owed the money to these credit card companies and we wanted to pay back what we owed. Well through this all we both were under a lot of stress and humilliation and now out around $7000.00 that we paid to this company that we could have paid to maybe one of our credit cards.

I guess you learn by mistakes and this was a very big mistake to learn because we surely could use the $70000.00 that we paid to this attorney that could have went towards our Chapter 13 Bankruptcy plan. Now we are on this plan for 5 years and maybe we should have gone this way to begin with but we did not know at the time.

Debbie should file a complaint with the State Bar of California. She will find a complaint form at http://www.calbar.ca.gov/calbar/pdfs/DispComp.pdf.

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