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Reviewed Aug. 27, 2014
After reading many different reviews, positive and negative but mostly negative, I felt the need to write a review. I have been with Care One since July of 2012. I had roughly $10K+ of debt. I had reached a point where I was getting nowhere with making the minimum payments through all my creditors, being that I maxed out credit cards and had high interest rates due to having little credit to no credit history. I was young and irresponsible, using money that was truly not mine to spend. I couldn't afford to make higher payments to all my creditors and it seemed that with the payments I made, the interest would overcome my payments every month.
Care One, from the beginning, explained everything very clearly to me and how whichever program I chose to do through them would impact my credit. I chose the program that took longer but didn't impact my credit as much. Care One sent out proposals to all my creditors and all but one accepted them and negotiated payments. They even negotiated forgiving me of a certain amount of interest I owed on certain creditors, along with lowering all of my interest rates for all my creditors.
Since I began the program and made my very first payment, payments were always made on time and always sent to the creditors. I ALWAYS double-checked my online statements and paper statements from all my creditors so that if something went wrong, I could catch it from the beginning. There has never been an issue. As I started paying off multiple creditors, I would email them asking to adjust my payments and allocate the payment amounts of the creditors I paid off to the rest of my creditors that were still open. They always replied within a day and adjust my payment allocations without error.
The key to this program through Care One is to keep up with it, dot your I's in a sense. Make sure the payments are being made, make sure your statements reflect those payments, and manually update your balances to ensure everything is accurate. The progression is slow at first but once you get started and see your debt swelling down, you feel relief and feel like you're on a path to becoming debt free.
Care One is a program that is there to ASSIST you, not do everything for you. Their fees are minimal and their service is reliable. I pay $20 per month to Care One for their service fee, which is nothing to me compared to all the money they have saved me by lowering my interest rates and negotiating interest accrued. I have 3 months left on my program, and to this day, Care One has been flawless. My credit is amazing, and I owe this review at the least to Care One for that. They want to help and they will help, as long as people realize that they are merely HELP, and becoming debt free is ultimately your responsibility.
Reviewed July 4, 2014
Believed that I was paying my debit off. Estimated I only had 6 months to pay it off. Ran credit report found out that it was more than the six payments but delinquent. According to cash call my balance was twice what I owed. Paid it off. Went to check my program report, couldn't access my emails to the program after I paid off debit to cash call. The other creditors that I had paid off had a check mark by them. Cash call was no longer listed as though it had never been a creditor. Program doesn't keep up with current balances. Beware. I ended up paying more than 100 percent of the loan because of this. Took out $2600.00 ended up paying $4500.00 for ten months.
Reviewed May 17, 2014
I hired them to consolidate my debt and signed on for the 4 years and it's been 5... and now I am canceling. They have been charging me $12.00 a month the whole time. I'm hoping that is better than the interest!
Reviewed Feb. 5, 2014
Should have went through a Non-Profit, but otherwise they were fine.
Reviewed Jan. 27, 2014
Whatever you do don't use this company, this is the biggest rip off ever. Tell your neighbors, tell your friends not to use these people. All they want is your money. They make all kinds of promises, and pretend to be your best friend but all the time scheming to take your money. I will do whatever it takes to let everyone know what a rip off this company is. They even have the nerve to tell you MONEY BACK GUARANTEE! WHAT A BUNCH OF LIARS! Stay as far away from this company, I pray everyone who was scammed by this company will post their bad experience. Hopefully BBB will close these rip offs down, again let everyone know. Don't let your friends and family get ripped off of their hard-earned money!
Reviewed Dec. 16, 2013
They were great at first. I have had an account with them for 2 years and loved their work. It didn't get bad until they made it very hard to pay off the bill we owed the creditors. My loan manager said they were rude and they were quite rude to me too. We needed an accurate amount for pay off and it took them almost a month to get back to us. Now we finally got a hold of them again and they still couldn't get the amount we needed so we had to go ahead and pay off two creditors on our own and then pay the rest. We still do not know if it is totally paid off. We may have to pay more in January. If CareOne wanted us to pay off our bills fast they should have helped us more with paying it off. Instead I had to go to a loan officer and have help from her. Very unprofessional in my opinion.
Reviewed Nov. 7, 2013
If anyone out there is reading this, I got ripped off by CareOne. I was with them almost three years and was on my last payment according to them and when I called my creditor to get the balance, they said I still owed them 5700 dollars and I said, "That's crazy, it should be 274.95 dollars." That's when they told me they are not a settlement company and did not accept CareOne's proposal. Here's where it gets weird. CareOne has sent proposals to my creditor in the past for other CareOne members like myself and they're all handled the same, not accepted. That means no relief. I mean nothing, I did not get any interest charges dropped, no penalties dropped.
I was paying CareOne fifty dollars a month to forward my payment. That's all they were doing, yeah, and I am an idiot for not checking my statements to what CareOne was saying but my point is, they should have told me they can't help because they know my creditor does not settle. Instead, they led me on making me think by their website everything is okay. So what I say to you is if you're in debt because of a credit card, make sure you check yourself if the proposal has been accepted because CareOne doesn't care as long as they get your money and now are blaming me for not checking my statements and are not offering any relief.
Reviewed Oct. 9, 2013
In late 2009, I knew that the museum I had worked for over the previous decade was going to close. I just didn't know how much time I had. We had some credit card debt, about $18,000 worth. I went on a recommendation from a family member with Care One (CESI). I'm puzzled by the other reviews I see here because we had zero problems in using their service, aside from one creditor (Barclay's) who refused to accept the negotiated payment arrangement. We figured that out... Just had Care One pay Barclay's the few dollars more they wanted. Every month, like clockwork, I make my payment, and every month, my creditors have been paid on time. I'm about 7 months from clearing out all that debt, and I've been saving easily over $100 per month in the difference I'd be paying in the non-negotiated creditor interest vs. my service fees to Care One, which are quite small for what they do. Their online account management is great, showing you how much is left due to each creditor, and how long until everything's paid off. Experiences when calling them have been great. They're responsive, helpful and courteous. I recommend this company highly.
Reviewed Sept. 27, 2013
I joined Care One about three months ago, after having a bad experience with a settlement company. At first, I was relieved that a place that seemed very well rated online was going to take care of my debts, credit cards and payday loans as well. I originally got into debt with credit cards and payday loans due to my job as a speech therapist working for a program in the state of Illinois. They started in 2008 to delay payments, whereas prior to this, they paid us every week. Delays went as much as eighty days at one time. One way therapists got by was to obtain credit cards, etc to help get by during these times. I already had one bankruptcy in my past due to Discover card putting a judgment against me. I have tried to deal with creditors as much as possible since this time to avoid having this happen again. Well, Capital One also decided to send me to a lawyer, bypassing the collections route that most credit cards take, even though I had made attempts to pay them before they did this.
The law firm they went with has been very stringent in trying to obtain payments, and eventually got a court order to obtain payments from me. Right before this, I was talking to someone at their firm trying to make a payment arrangement, but obviously they didn't like the amount, because they went ahead and filed a suit against me anyway. Well, I put this creditor with Care One. I told Care One that this creditor was one I wanted to make sure was paid more than others. I even wanted to make sure I paid them the amount they wanted to begin with me. However, Care One set aside less than this for payments to them. They make payments to creditors and these creditors may not accept proposals from them but that they do get the money from these payments. I did explain my situation to them with this credit card, that they filed suit, so I wanted to make sure that they took care of them. Supposedly, this law firm handling Capital One did not like the first payment Care One proposed, so they discussed it and changed it to a higher amount.
Care One called me to tell me that this place accepted the amount, even though it was lower than the amount they agreed on with me before I went to Care One, because they have done business with Care One before. So Care One made a payment to them of the amount they accepted and this place got this money. However, a week later after receiving this payment, this law firm decided to garnish my bank account, taking out almost $700, on top of the payment they just received from Care One. I have no way to stop this since they used a State of Illinois law that enabled them to take this from my account, without asking me or telling me they would do it. So all this time, I thought Care One was taking care of this for me, this still happened. By the way, the irony of all this is that it was the State of Illinois delaying payments for my work for them that led me to get this credit card, and now through a law firm representing Capital One, they are using a State of Illinois law to take money from my bank account.
I tried so hard to prevent this from happening when I handled my own bills, when I handled creditors myself. I have tried so hard to avoid another bankruptcy, but because I gave control of creditors to this place, this is the position I'm in. Maybe this Care One works for people who do not have this type of creditor, I don't know. But, when I tried to tell Care One what the law firm told me, they made excuses for them, "Oh we really don't know why this happened." I just got off the phone and they told me exactly why it happened. They had the right to take my money from my account due to the laws in Illinois. I kept telling Care One this, and they kept trying to tell me we don't know why. Then when I lost money from my account, all they could tell me is "We will do an investigation into why this happened, which will take ten days." They also tell me, "If this law firm had a court order against you, they could still proceed to take money from your account despite the help we give."
Care One knew about this. I told them that I did what I was supposed to when I entered their program. The bottom line is I lost money to this law firm on their watch, and they don't seem to want to take responsibility for it. I had to speak to a lawyer about bankruptcy, which I have been trying to avoid for so long, and he told me that this place let me down. They let this happen to me on their watch. Please my advice to anyone with debt problems is to try to handle it yourself. With enough money over time and continuously talking to these creditors yourself, it can be done. Most places want to work things out and will work with you. I would not go to any other place no matter how highly rated they seem to be. This is an honest review of what has happened to me. I think from now on I'm going to put more weight on the negative reviews than positive ones.
Reviewed Aug. 29, 2013
I have been with them for about a year now - they gave me 2 options and were very clear about the pros and cons/consequences of each: one would lower my debt much faster but would have greater hardship on my credit scores (just a step above bankruptcy) and the other would require much more work on my part, but with their help we could get back on top. I chose the latter, and each month we crawl out together. Their reporting is impeccable and their attention to customers is without complaint. What more could you ask for... Miracles? Not likely. But this is a good, reliable company that delivers what they say. If anyone is disappointed, it is probably because they didn't ask enough questions up front, didn't read all the stuff they send you carefully, and had an overall case of "wishful thinking". There are no "magic wands" to make debt go away without consequences - that is childish to hope for!
Reviewed June 20, 2013
When I contacted CareOne, the Rep explained to me the different choices I had with their programs to help me pay my debts with one small monthly payment. They told me that they had two services: a) credit card management counseling services and b) debt negotiation. I chose A which was to repay the entire debt, along with accrued interests, over the course of five years. The rep clearly explained to me that by choosing the debt management program, I was still paying 100% of the debts - but with lower monthly payments, she clearly told me that this program WOULD NOT impact my credit cards, nor my FICO score, and so I submitted the application under that condition.
I was a little skeptical about this whole thing, and I started reading reviews the very next day (which I should have done before submitting the application). But oh well, at least I did it, the next day and not a week later. The reviews were bad; a high percent of the people enrolled with CareOne were having problems. So I called to cancel. I told the rep that I wasn't happy because I had read that their programs impact the credit scores. The CareOne rep told me that I had no problem, that my application was still on hold waiting for payment, and that they hadn't contacted any of my creditors yet. So I hung up and thought everything was fine.
Two weeks later, I went online to check my credit card statements, and they all had a sign with the words "ACCOUNT RESTRICTED" in red letters. I called all my credit card companies one by one, and they all said that I had to call CareOne and have them write a letter to them saying that I had cancelled the program before it even started. I called CareOne immediately and they told me that the letters had gone out to the creditors by mistake. I asked the rep WHY they did this if I had cancelled the next day. She told me that she was sorry, that she was going to take care of the problem and write each creditor a letter to remove the restriction from my accounts. She said it would take at least 2 to 3 weeks.
HOWEVER, 2 months had passed by, and NOTHING! The restrictions are still there, and my accounts are closed. I can't even use a credit card anymore. They said that I had to re-apply again. I am looking for a lawyer to help me with this case, because what they did to me is not right. I don't even think is legal. They have ruined my credit even after I cancelled the program 1 day after the application was sent. This is insane. I am so upset. PLEASE, if anybody out there knows of a Lawyer that can help me, please reply to this post. Thank you.
Reviewed June 7, 2013
I started the program back in April 2012. I had a lot of debt and they recommended Debt Settlement. Well, two of my creditors "accepted" the proposal (and are now paid). I currently have a large bill that is in settlement (which I'm happy that they've "accepted" the proposal at about 40% of the total amount). BUT last week, I was served FOUR summons from GE Capital Retail Bank. NOW, I have to go to court and CareOne is basically telling me, "You were to read the documents that we submitted to you from the beginning that you SIGNED." So instead of "possibly" going to court, they've resubmitted these four proposal offers to the Attorney of the Plaintiff. Well sure, they're willing to "accept" the proposals now but they've tacked on almost $4,000 IN FEES AND BACK PAYMENT. I'm no better off now than I was in the beginning. So, I should probably go to court next week and tell the judge that I was screwed over by CareOne and now I'm back peddling once again because of them.
Reviewed May 29, 2013
I signed up with Care One after I lost my job so I would not screw up my credit. Six months later, I went to check my credit score and every payment has been late for the past 6 months. My score is now in the crapper because of them. I recommend trying to figure out an alternative but do not use these jerks.
Reviewed May 13, 2013
I would give zero stars if possible. First off, they tell you not to pay your creditors directly so you get behind and then have a past 30-day payment on your credit history. The debt consolidation itself is a step above bankruptcy. The customer service is awful. Requests are not fulfilled and they charge $35 a month to give a meager discounted interest rate, and the late fees disappear after your credit is ruined! They do not communicate effectively and have done nothing but make my credit situation worse. Use the $35 fee towards your monthly bill because you will not get anywhere with this company!
Reviewed Oct. 21, 2012
CareOne mistreated us and was not a good partner in debt.
Reviewed Oct. 9, 2012
I must preface by saying that I take full responsibility for racking up $60,000 in credit card debt. The signs of impending financial disaster were there but I was in denial. My credit rating was excellent but it was becoming increasingly difficult to pay all the bills on time. The day I woke up to the truth, I called CareOne for help. I must admit that they were upfront in saying that my credit rating may be adversely affected by signing on, but I was desperate. They told me not to make any more payments to those creditors that I wanted to negotiate with. It was supposed to give me some kind of leverage. The longer my creditors didn't get a payment from me, the more they would be inclined to reduce my debt. Ha ha! They claimed to be able to reduce the amount I owed each company by about 25-40%. They said that I could negotiate on my own but would not get my total debt lowered as much if I worked with them on my own.
I signed on in faith that they had the magic power to persuade the four credit card companies I had owed to accept their proposal on my behalf, allowing me to reduce the total amount I owed, consolidate the rest and then pay it off in 6 years. What they neglected to tell me was that no credit card company will lower any amount of debt over $5,000. I had one card they helped me with. It was the one with the lowest balance of $5,000. The credit card company accepted $2,500.00 as full payment. A caveat they didn't tell me was that I had to then claim the unpaid $2,500 as income on the next year's tax return. The other three cards were with Capital One and Chase Bank. My balances with them were between $15K and $20K each. I received collection calls despite CareOne's sending them all cease and desist notices.
When the creditors called, I told them I was working with CareOne Debt Relief. It didn't matter. In fact, I was told that Capital One, Chase Bank, Bank of America, etc. does not work with CareOne or any debt relief companies! I didn't believe them at first. After the first collection call, I called CareOne to say I'm starting to get collection calls. They told me just to say I'm working with CareOne and hang up on them. Things just went from bad to worse. The collection calls kept coming and each time they told me they do not make deals to reduce unpaid debt, period! Penalties were piling up, the interest rates on my unpaid debt was rising astronomically each month. By now, every time I called CareOne, I spoke to someone different and each one gave me a completely different and conflicting answer about numerous arising concerns.
After six months of this, the Sheriff arrived one Sunday to bring us a subpoena to appear in court to answer why I wasn't paying my bills. I spoke to a lawyer who told me that no matter what, you must pay. If you don't, you will be hauled into court. They advise you to not bother paying a lawyer because there is no legal excuse for not paying your bills. If you don't have the money, the judge can arrange to have your wages garnished. Yeah, I could have gone to court and told them that I'm working with CareOne, but at the end of the day it isn't a legal excuse. I started to believe the collection callers who'd told me all along that Capital One and Chase Bank does not work with CareOne to reduce your debt. I ended up working with each individual company myself to convert the outstanding debt into a loan that would be paid off in seven years. In return, they stopped all penalties and gave me an interest rate I could work with and of course, my credit card was cancelled. The only time the credit card company will knock a chunk off your debt is if you promise to pay the rest off in three or four payments.
Like me, if you had the money to do that, you wouldn't be in debt in the first place. The writer who defended CareOne claimed that they didn't take money for their service. Not true. My payments to CareOne went into an Escrow account that earned interest. They got to keep the interest. Upon cancelling, I was able to get all the money I'd put into the escrow account back but they kept 1/3 as a "withdrawal fee." Part of their service is to provide you with a monthly budget. In the end, it wasn't realistic and not worth the trees that were killed to produce the paper. I was lucky in that after two years, I was able to pay all my creditors after receiving a small inheritance. However, it's been three years and despite paying everyone off in full, my credit rating is still not near what it used to be. Beware of people promising easy answers. If it seems too good to be true…
Reviewed June 22, 2012
This post is going to be slightly different than the other 20 or so I've read in the last 10-15 minutes. I'm writing to defend CareOne Debt Relief Services, as 80% of what I have read so far is clearly false. The name "CareOne" is used by several (hundreds) of companies, all types of different industries; and there are some posts on here that are so falsely misleading. I took the time out of my extremely busy schedule in an effort to set the record straight. There are enough legitimately bad businesses out there, especially in the debt relief industry; the last thing any company needs is bad reviews about experiences a consumer has had with a totally different company.
CareOne Debt Relief Services is based out of Columbia, MD and has been ranked #4 out of the top 100 companies to work for, several years in a row. That's no easy feat. CareOne is involved in hundreds of charitable and community organizations, treats customers and employees as family, and most importantly, does not make loans to people ever! The whole idea is to get out of debt and stop using loans and credit to pay your way through life. A person posted a story about going to a dentist and being "made to use a credit card from CareOne for dental services." It's GE Money Bank / CareCredit that issued that credit line to the person, not CareOne Debt Relief. These are 2 totally separate entities and 2 totally opposite ends of the spectrum.
Most people do not read any document they sign. They want anyone other than themselves to clean up the mess they have created, be it through actual financial hardship or just plain irresponsible spending and racking up credit card debt they could not afford to pay off. I know too much about the financial and debt management/debt settlement industries to believe that a company as large and economically secure as CareOne does not have every single disclaimer on their contracts. I had zero problems reading the contract, and their other 40,000+ clients seem to be doing pretty well too. It cannot always be the fault of someone else or some company that a creditor sued you for not paying your debt. If you read that contract when you obtained that credit card (which I'm sure didn't happen), you probably would have known that if you stop making payments, you are susceptible to be sued for the debt you owe.
When the FTC changed the laws surrounding debt settlement and debt management, companies in November 2010, 80% of all "debt relief" companies, went out of business almost overnight, because the new laws stated no companies can collect any upfront fees prior to settling a debt for its client. So in reality, CareOne and any other debt settlement company operating legally do not make a dime until they actually negotiate a settlement on your behalf. This, of course, requires money to be paid into an escrow account monthly by you. Consumers have to take responsibility and work with the agency, not just expect miracles to happen because of a commercial they saw on TV. When the debt is created by you, it must be cleaned up by you. Too many people think "Well, I hired this company and paid them some money, so I don't have to think about this anymore." It's not the case at all.
Maybe, the first step anyone should make before paying any company any money is do simple homework and read about what it is you are signing up for. CareOne was more than open with what to expect, how to handle creditor calls, and what your other options were; and being that they are open 7 days a week (Yes, even on Sundays), there is no way you could call "30 times and then another 10 times and never be able to get through to someone," as one person posted. If you ever notice on these types of "Consumer Review Boards," the only people who ever post on review boards are people who had a bad experience. Go figure. Americans need to learn to stop being so quick to point the finger at someone else and take responsibility for their actions. Were you complaining when Macy's charged the money to your credit card? Nope. Just complaining that you have to pay it back.
Reviewed April 14, 2012
We went to Care One for help with our debt situation in hopes we could pay our debts in a method which would allow us lower payments and still pay our creditors. Care One explained their method which is to contact the credit company and negotiate a payoff. Then our monthly fee to them would help pay the credit company until the debt was paid off. After almost two years into the program, we received a summons to appear in court for garnishment of wages. We called Care One who informed us that some creditors will do this and they would take care of it. We asked if we should go to the scheduled court date but they informed us not to. They would take care of it. Two months later, a garnishment on my wages began. When we called Care One, we had to leave messages for our reps. They, however, never returned our calls.
After one month and about 40 calls to Care One, we received another summons from another company to appear in court for the purpose of initiating another garnishment. We attempted to call Care One 10 more times, but no calls were returned. We sought the help of an attorney who told us our only resource was to file bankruptcy. In the process, Care One was contacted for the amount of attorney fees we paid to Care One and a refund of any money they were holding to pay off any creditors. Our initial attorney fees with Care One were nearly $2000 and we found that very little of our monthly payments went to pay our creditors, the majority being taken by Care One (Percells & Associate) as fees. The bankruptcy we were trying to avoid by contacting Care One was now unavoidable.
Reviewed Dec. 12, 2011
I entered the debt management program at CareOne for the express purpose of lowering my interest rate and consolidating my payments. My cards were not late, my credit is in good standing. CareOne didn't send my payment in a timely manner to my Citi accounts and after 3 months of "re-negotiating", Citi has now dropped those accounts from my consolidation, leaving me with late fees, a penalty 29% interest and late payments. Citi will not allow me to enter into another plan or agreement either.
Reviewed Dec. 8, 2011
So far I’m doing 90% of the work. If this continues, I will not be with them much longer .11 creditors approved, one more to go. I’m looking for a better option. A lawyer said for a grand he can clean up all my debts legally! I’m hopping the government shuts them down.
Reviewed Dec. 7, 2011
My husband called CareOne to get information on their program. When I found out, I told him and the company that I was not interested because of the cost and I did not want our credit score to be affected. Since this time, they have called at least five times. When they called this morning (12-7-2011), I told them I was the one in charge of finances and I was not interested in their program. I was told I "was not *** and that he would call back." He then hung up on me. When my husband called back and asked them not to call again, he was called an ***! I would not do business with this company now or in the future!
Reviewed Nov. 14, 2011
I came to CareOne credit with about $10,000 of debt. I spoke with a consultant regarding DMP at length before I enrolled in the plan because I had heard that these programs could negatively affect your credit history (My credit was excellent, but I was out of work and only able to pay the minimum balance at a very high interest rate). CareOne helped to lower my interest rates so that my payments were, in fact, lowering the amount I owed. However, the representative swore (on a recorded phone call) that the DMP would absolutely have no effect on my credit rating. I pulled my credit report recently, and saw negative marks on my credit report. I called CareOne to report that their employee had provided fraudulent information in order to get me to enroll in the program. The manager apologized and said there was nothing they could do about this. The employee was not even reprimanded.
Reviewed Nov. 3, 2011
CareOne Credit Counseling of Cherry Hill, NJ is out of business. We paid $1,000 per month that was supposed to be accumulated to anticipate a payoff from our creditors. $4,000, later we learned that they were out of business and took all of our money without providing one bit of service that we paid for. They didn't tell us anything. Phones disconnected, office packed up, the employees and owners all moved away. We cannot find them to even try and get out money back.
Reviewed Sept. 12, 2011
What a bunch of ** this company is! They do what they want and without your best interest. They take $50 a month as a fee. And then they take a fee for whatever money they supposedly save you, which for me amounted to about $200. For over the year that I was with this company they took over $1000 in fees. They settled with a few creditors, but I could have done that myself without their help or their fees. I specifically told them not to settle on any accounts without first letting me know. They said they wouldn't negotiate and settle without first talking to me. But instead they just did what they wanted and took the fees without any correspondence on what they took or paid. Please do not waste your time working with this company. There has to be better debt consolidation companies out there!
Reviewed Aug. 10, 2011
I signed up for the Debt Management Program (DMP) a year and a half ago in Arizona. I had five or six creditors that accepted me into the program, and everything was going very well. I moved to California, and I called CareOne to change my mailing address. They told me that there was a different program in California, and that I'd have sign a new agreement to continue.
I signed the new agreement, but now the same creditors I had before won't accept me back into the program under the previous terms. The idiots at CareOne didn't bother to tell me that creditors with less than a $1000 balance were dropped from the program. Now I'm getting notices from my creditors demanding all sorts of payments, and telling me that my interest rates are going back to the 22-35 percent range.
Reviewed July 17, 2011
We made our monthly payments to CareOne as agreed. One year later we find that CareOne has passed our account to some law firm without telling us. None of our bills had been paid even once during that year. When we complained, we were told there was nothing they could do and our only recourse was to discontinue the service. When we did, the law firm kept 2/3s of the money we'd paid over the year for "expenses."
Reviewed May 6, 2011
I signed up with Care One Credit Services (CESI) in March 2011. This company is bogus. Citibank accepted the proposal sent for monthly payments of $77. CESI neglected to send the payment to Citibank in a timely fashion as Citibank dropped me from their debt management program. CESI pretty much has told me that there was nothing that they could do. When I called customer service, the service representatives have been unprofessional. I have been hung up on and also told to cancel my services if I am unsatisfied. They have no intention of rectifying their error. Because of this, it doesn't appear that Citibank will accept me into their debt management program.
Reviewed May 5, 2011
My husband and I are enrolled in CareOne's debit settlement program. January of this year, I received a call from the lawyer of CareOne, Stan ***, saying that he had settled an account and agreed to make monthly payments of $100 but that I needed to pay an extra $200 over the $300 monthly payment to pay this account on time. I did so. I received another call from Mr. *** about a week or so later telling me that CareOne had used the money that was supposed to be paid on the account to settle another account. He also said he spoke to the lawyers for the creditor and they agreed to a partial payment in February and a full payment in March but that I was again short because of the money being used on that other account. Mr. *** said I needed to come up with another $27 on Feb. 27th. I paid another $27. The payment was never made. CareOne said I didn't get it in on time. As a result of this, my husband's check is being garnished.
Reviewed Dec. 14, 2010
I joined CareOne in May 2010 and everything seems to go okay until in November, they took out 2 payments within 4 days of each other. I had my bank cancelled the 2nd erroneous payment since when I contacted CareOne, they said it would take 14 days to reimburse me for the error. The agent also stated that all my bank fees would be reimbursed. This was in December 2. Now, it is December 14 and I get a letter in the mail basically stating they will not reimburse me for the bank charges.
I quit them and now am working directly with my creditor and am getting the same deal as CareOne but no headaches. So going through CareOne, it costs me an extra $245 for service fees which ended up being bad service. How can their agent say something and they do not follow up on it? So basically, an agent can say anything and you are not guaranteed that the information is correct or will be followed through on.
Reviewed Nov. 10, 2010
I am not leery of Care One Credit. Before I started with Care One Credit, I had heard of Consumer Credit Counseling of Rochester, New York, but I chose to go with Care One Credit. So far, things are going okay; my bills are going to the creditors because I double-check.
The one thing that I don't understand though is that Care One says that they negotiated with the creditors but I don't think they really did. When I first started the program, they told them they can assure me that my payment would be 254 dollars. After the first month, my payment went up to 333 dollars and was still growing until I told them I can't afford not one more dime and if the creditor can't accept the proposal then what can I do, my hours were cut in half. I am not trying to run away from my bill but I would think going through a credit counseling would help. I also have to contact the creditors to find out the remaining balance or better yet, Care One runs a credit report check to see what I still owe the creditors, how can that be helping my credit score.
I want to switch to Consumer Credit Counseling of Rochester but I don't know how to go about switching from one company to the next.
CareOne Credit Counseling Company Information
- Company Name:
- CareOne Credit Counseling
- Website:
- www.careonecredit.com
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