Although some of the more outlandish promises from advertisements could be disregarded relatively easily, many of the more elaborate debt relief scams are too confusing to be avoided at first glance by consumers without much first hand knowledge of consumer finance trickery. The most popular debt relief scams avoid detection because they’re sufficiently similar to the genuine forms of debt elimination that have taken the country by storm over the past decade as escalating credit card worries and ever more shaky employment prospects lead the most stalwart American couples to first consider the assistance of strangers.
The easiest sorts of debt relief scams to spot – and, as should be the logical consequence, the easiest scams to avoid – don’t do anything for their clients whatsoever beyond taking what little money remains in the family coffers. More than anything else, these most brazen of debt relief thieves wish to evade capture. Accordingly, the smart ones figure out ways to confound the authorities through ever shifting websites and no fixed business address. For borrowers hoping to avoid debt relief scams, this should send up giant warning flags whenever a business advertising itself as a debt relief specialist insists upon only receiving payment in the form of cash or money orders.
A craftier form of elimination scam that borrowers find harder to avoid uses federal government grants as the primary hook. The explosion of television commercials extolling the virtues of these grants – with billions of dollars supposedly budgeted by the United States Congress for various debt reduction efforts just laying around to be claimed – has led otherwise reasonable heads of household to fork over money for what amounts to a treasure map drawn by hucksters. In this case, the cleverest debt relief scams will couch their promises within a veneer of truth. After all, within the entirety of the governmental budget, there are bound to be grants earmarked for the debt relief of specific groups. However, the men and women funneling cash to afford the software and monthly administrative ‘expenses’ (usually pre-paid for the coming year) packaged with applicable grant funds would be better off buying lottery tickets.
Anyone who spends the proper amount of time verifying the legitimacy of the debt relief organization they want to work with should not have too much trouble sniffing out obvious cases of fraud like the ones above. However, since there’s no set pricing for debt relief assistance based upon tradition, it’s a bit tougher to recognize these smaller scale scams as they occur. Indeed, one could even argue the point of whether or not a settlement negotiation scheme that features artificially raised prices would be considered a scam. So long as the debt settlement professionals manage to legally force the lenders to drop their claims to a sizable percentage of the original credit card balances, they’ve then essentially done their jobs. The very best of the debt professionals will be paid primarily on commission, but the amount of money each company charges could differ by thousands of dollars. To a certain extent, settlement negotiators or debt management specialists who sincerely are among the tops in their field deserve the payday for convincing their clients’ creditors to walk away satisfied for just fifty or sixty cents on the dollar. However, if any one firm appears to charge significantly more than their competitors, the company may just be hoping for a clientele unaware about industry practices. This sort of straightforward over-pricing might not send anyone to jail for debt relief scams, but any business to behave in this fashion most definitely should be avoided.
My name is Cole I am a professional in the financial fields of bankruptcy and debt settlement.
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