During any given day I meet or talk with various people about their debts and options. On this particular occasion, it was a person who had contacted our offices over the phone about their options.
It was a very interesting call from my perspective as it was from a pay phone outside the Debt Consultants office. She was there for a meeting with a debt consultant to discuss options regarding her debts. She was not sure if she was doing the correct thing and asked to be excused from the meeting and go to the bathroom. It was at this time she called our offices as she also had one of newspaper advertisements with her. For this purpose I will call the person “Sally”.
Sally wanted to know if we had any fee that we charged upfront. I advised her that our initial consultations were free or at no charge. Also typically there was no money up front that she would be required to pay to do either a bankruptcy or a consumer proposal. Sally went on to tell me that once the debt consultant had reviewed some of her financial information they concluded that she needed to see a trustee to likely file for bankruptcy and that for a fee of $1000 they would make the introduction for her. Sally called our office as she did not have a $1,000 to give them but needed to do something about her debt and wondered if she could see us at no charge. AS I had told her there was no fee to meet with us for a consultation it was free and we would review all options and come up with a plan that would work for her.
We did continue the conversation so that I could get a little more financial information from her over the phone and give her some things to bring to our meeting. From the information over the phone it appeared that she might be able to do a consumer proposal and not a bankruptcy. She was happy to hear that the proposal was still an option. She really did not want to file for bankruptcy which is why she went to the debt counselor in the first place.
She was not far from my office and she had most of the information with her for the meeting she had with the debt counselor. I had a free hour and asked her if she wanted to come over to our place for about an hour to discuss the proposal option further. We set up a time for later that day. We sat down and reviewed all options. Her financial situation was follows: She had about $25,000 in credit card and like debt. She did have a car loan and was current on the payments and wanted to keep it, as she needed it for work. She did various shifts. Told her that was ok but she needed to continue to make the car payments to be able to keep the car. She understood. Her budget was good she was making about $2300 net income per month. She had about $275 left over on her budget after rent and food and the like. I suggested a consumer proposal for $200 per mth for 40 months or $8,000. She was good with that and we proceeded to finalize the paperwork.
She same in later that week to sign the necessary paperwork to begin the proposal process. She liked the fact that she now had a legally binding contract with all her creditors that would be finalized in the next 45 days – the voting period. The creditors did vote yes for the proposal and it passed with no further issues. Sally found the process to be simple and easy to follow. She liked the fact that we were upfront about all costs and issues and that there was not a new cost to be charged along the way.
She is currently making payments. Granted she still has another couple of years to go.
To read more about some of our client’s experiences with debt consultants, take a look at this article: http://www.hoyes.com/blog/2011/10/debt-consultants-horror-stories.html