11/2/2010 2:53 PM (PST)

Hi Andrea,

Debt settlement companies are bad news. You'll pay high fees for their work and you'll be advised to stop making payments to creditors. Creditors will turn you over to collection agencies and likely file suit against you. In the end, most likely none of your debt will be negotiated downward and in fact you'll owe more than when you began. Furthermore, you'll have to personally deal with the lawsuits.

The FTC recently implemented a new rule forbidding these companies from collecting any money in advance of negotiating debts. This rule went into effect october 27th of this year.

7/27/2012 5:21 PM (PST)

We contracted with Farmer's Law to negotiate a lower mortgage payment. They suggested we do a debt consolidation also. Long story short, seven months later, we couldn't get any one to speak with us...on rare occasions when they did, they gave us no information, just the run-around. We paid the law firm $2995.00+ and made payments of $364.23 for 7 months to the debt consolation (Consumer Legal Center, Irvine, CA) After 7 months and no response, our house went into forclosure. We decided to quit and negotiate on our own. We sure didn't want to lose our home. We knew the lawyer's fee was lost, but thought that the debt consolation monies that had been put into escrow would be returned. We learned today that they have no intention of refunding anything. Stay away from these people. We are retired and on a fixed income...we should have known better, but we trusted them...wrong move. Now we just hope we can save our home.