This post is intended to provide a forum for ZipDebt clients to post comments about their experience with the program. Recently, I spoke to a person interested in my program, and they told me that they didn’t bother to read any of the testimonials on my site because “everybody fakes testimonials.” Well, that’s probably true of many (if not most) debt-related websites. Not so with ZipDebt. ALL of my testimonials are real. No need for faking it here. But it gave me the idea of providing a way for clients to write in and post comments on their own.
Feel free to write about your experience of handling your own negotiations with training and coaching by yours truly.
Two simple ground rules for posting your feedback:
1. Please do not mention bank names or the names of collection agencies. (Two reasons for this: One, I don’t want to get drowned in blog-spam by debt collectors who work for said companies, or notices from their legal departments, etc. Two, settlement percentages are a moving target, and a bank/agency that settles for 30% today may stick with 50% tomorrow, and vice versa.)
2. Please do not include website links or html tags in your posts.
3. No profanity please (however tempting it may be to dump on your favorite debt collector). π
Otherwise, please feel free to relate as much or as little as you care to share with others. The main purpose here is to help the folks who are struggling with their decision about whether to use this strategy in their situation.
I want to thank Charles with all my heart. I was nearly $80,000
(thats eighty thousand) in credit card debt and thougt I would never get out The
course really helped me. I settled the $80,000.00 of credit card debt for a
little over 27,000.00 I saved 50,0000. I owe it all to Charles and his e mails
I was drowning in debt for years and now I can breathe and relax again with peace
of mind. I followed his advice to the letter and everything he said to do, I
did and it was worth it. His course is worth ten times what he is asking. Anyone
can succeed if they follow his advice. I want to thank you again Charles with
all my heart. I owe you my life.
I don’t even know where to begin – to say that Charles has changed our lives is the biggest understatement imaginable.
He took us from massive hopeless debt to seeing bright light at the end of the tunnel in less than two years.
Starting with some $186,000 of debt, we have settled one account after another, negociating with Charles one-on-one guidance. We have settled a total of $120,000 of debt with settlements of 22% to 60%, paying a total of $50,575. Our average settlement percent is now $42%, but it is getting lower as we go along and get better at it.
For anyone who may be intersted in how this all happened, here’s our sad story:
Over the course of 20+ years, we STRUGGLED to get out from under what ended up being 14 different credit card accounts. Our total unsecured debt ended up being over $186,000. This is what happens when you borrow from Peter to pay Paul – open a new charge account in order to transfer balances with the intention of closing the old account, but then you need the old account for money to live on. Then all of your charge accounts keep raising your credit limits because you’ve done such a good job of managing your credit (translation – juggling).
We were a disaster waiting to happen, and it did. We hit the wall in November, 2003 when there was no money to make a payment on one account, which meant there was no ‘room’ on that account to pay the next account, and so on – just like dominos in a line.
I know this is getting long, and Charles, you may want to edit this, but I just don’t know which part to cut out and make it be logical.
The first thing we did was fall for one of those scams that you talk about. This so called ‘debt solution’ program asserted that we didn’t really owe anything to these creditors because they had never really given us anything in the first place – the evil banks had simply used us to borrow money from the government, and they would never pay that money back – besides the fact that they could never prove that we actually got any money from them in the first place.
Desperation blinded us to the fact that this was a scam, and like a drowning man would grab any rope offered – even if there was a monster throwing it out – we bought the program. After listening to their cd’s, we became aware that they were CROOKS! What a sinking feeling.
The problem was that we had followed their advice and stopped paying on ALL of our accounts, the phone was ringing constantly, all the accounts were charged off and reassigned to debt collectors, and the situation seemed hopeless.
We thought Bankruptcy was our only option – and to give the attorneys credit, we do feel like they bought us some time – they handled the calls for us and took the pressure off for a year or so while we made payments to them toward the bankruptcy. After we had nearly paid them off, a consultation showed that we really couldn’t file (the reasons why were complicated, but it involved the fact that money was borrowed in our relatives names too.)
That’s when we turned to the Internet for help. Searching under ‘debt negociation’ ‘debt settlement’ – anything I could think of, I clicked a link leading to Charles. Reading his web page, it seemed to be too good to be true, but something clicked with me as being the real deal. I called his 800 number with what was probably a very pitiful cry for help, and much to my surprise, he called me back. It was incredible to me that I had actually found a real live person who was willing to help. He spent a long time on the phone with me, which was unbelievable considering that I hadn’t paid him a cent.
Everything he said made sense, and we had discovered the truth of much of it ourselves. So we bought the course and listened to it, but at the time our business was failing, and we had no money to put aside to settle anything, so we couldn’t implement it.
A sherriff knocking on our door serving lawsuit papers put us into high gear. Our only solution was to try to sell our home quickly before it was taken from us. We were able to sell within a few months, and with our equity cash in hand we started consulting with Charles to start settling with creditors, which by this time was debt collecters as well as a number of debt purchasers, and we were dealing with a judgment.
Facing 14 different creditors seemed impossible when we began. When we met with nasty, lying reps, Charles reassured us, told us the truth, and outlined how to proceed. In every situation, Charles has proven to be right. They all settle – you just have to be patient and play the game. Listen to Charles, he will lead you out of the maize. As you knock them off one at a time, you will acquire confidence. When another one comes up and you start to panic, Charles is there to lead you through, calm you down, and outline a plan of action.
This is such an emotional thing to me, I’m choking back tears as I write this, but Charles, you just don’t know what you have done for us. I know I have told you this before – but you saved us, you gave us hope in a hopeless situation. You’ve been the only person we could turn to, and you’ve never failed to lead us through the toughest situations.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart,
Gail
Just wanted to pass along my thanks to Charles. With his guidence, I was able to negotiate a reasonable settlement with creditors – in my case about 48%. If you’re willing to grind through the process, not get too flustered with the calls you’ll receive from debt purchasers and keep a good attitude, you will be able to work something out that is mutually beneficial for yourself and the creditor. Word of advice: stand your groubd with the collectors but be respectfull and professional with them. Set your bounderies and be clear that you will not tollerate abuse or rudeness but where possible be courteous – these folks are just trying to make a living too. Make it clear that you are willing to work with them. Great program and Charles is extremely responsive, objective and knowledeable. This program is short money compared to what you’ll save monetarily – not to mention from a standpoint of sanity. – steve